Twin One: A Rugrats Story
by GrandpaJoeProductionFanfiction
Summary: Parody of the film "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story." After years of living through the motions, a young accountant joins a group of unlikely heroes in order to steal top secret plans that will help bring down the tyrannical society they live under. But while the heroes move along with their mission, a young military leader will stop at nothing to keep this new world intact.
1. Prologue: Growing Up

The sun had barely gone down on Sunday, March 17, 2002, and Rachel Alcroft had just left her home in Redlands. She was biking over to her boyfriend's, Tommy Pickles, house in the neighboring town of Yucaipa since she had not seen him over the weekend. It usually took around forty minutes to get to Yucaipa since she had to maneuver through many different neighborhoods in Redlands and even cross a bridge over Interstate 10. Her father, Joshua, would usually take her over to Tommy's house but he was busy that day. When she reached her boyfriend's home she found him and his best friend, Chuckie, working on Tommy's science project. They were building a maze that they expected a huge rat could maneuver. She would have pointed this out, but seeing that Tommy was preoccupied with a school assignment, she and Tommy agreed to see each other next week. Biking back home wasn't usually as hard as it was this time since she had not rested, but Rachel made it back home around 8:30 PM. When she entered her home she found her father and her sisters, Rebecca and Lisa, sitting in the living room.

"Ah, Rachel, come here. I've got some news I need to tell you girls," Josh said.

Rachel sat in the longer couch next to her younger sister, Lisa, as she said, "Okay, what's going on?"

Josh sat in the smaller adjacent couch and said, "As you girls know, I've been away from the house a lot these past couple months. The reason I've been so busy is that I've been looking for a new job."

"A new job, but you're doing fine. Aren't you, dad?" Rebecca, the oldest daughter, asked.

"Oh, no, this isn't about the money, I mean, look at this house. No, this is about what I want to do for the rest of my life. Girls, there comes a time when you look back at your life choices and ask yourself if you are happy with your life. I had fun making video games, but I always saw myself using my degree for something more meaningful," Joshua replied.

"So, what does this mean?" Rachel asked.

"I asked an old friend of mine to get me an interview at Cal Poly Pomona, and after a series of interviews, I got the job," Josh said.

"That's great," Rebecca said as she hugged her father.

Ah, thank you, but, here's the thing, It would be a lot cheaper to live closer to the university than to commute, so we're going to move," Josh said before Rebecca leaned back from her father in shock, but she and Lisa accepted the fact that they would be moving.

Rachel just sat there, her father's revelation had taken her by surprise, to which her father responded, "Shayna Punim, don't worry, it will be alright. You'll make new friends at your new school."

The fact that she would lose all of her old friends and go to a new school was one thing, but she would have to break up with Tommy. Josh had told the girls they would be moving on April 8th, but that was not enough time for Rachel. She meant to tell Tommy that she was moving bust she couldn't bring herself to tell him. She would rather play the role of the helpful girlfriend for the two weekends after she learned the news. During those dates, Tommy talked to Rachel about the fact that two of his friends, "the twins" as Rachel referred to them, were having a joint birthday party, after having separate parties the year before. Tommy told her that they had made up the year before, but ever since then he also felt as if the male twin's relationship with the female one had changed.

After talking to Tommy about his friends, the two left to the park for their date. The local film club was showing a fifties sci-fi-horror film about mutated bees that Tommy found cheesy in the park. At first the two were having a great time watching the movie, but when Tommy leaned into Rachel she knew she had to tell him. She tried to tell him what was going on but he insisted that she wait until the movie ended. He was pretty sure that she was going to break up with him and he wanted to put it off for as long as possible. Rachel agreed but by the time the film was over she had become terrified of telling Tommy the truth. They agreed to meet up again the next day at the Java Lava and Rachel told him that her family was moving. At first, Tommy didn't see how this would impact their relationship but once she said that this was like breaking up he realized that they were going to break up. When Rachel told Tommy she would be leaving the next day he was taken back, meaning that this was their last night together. She didn't want to become even more emotional than she already was, so she just told Tommy "bye," kissed him on the lips, and left.

Once she returned home she finished packing the last small things in her room and moved them to the living room so that the movers could start loading as soon as they arrived at their home. As soon as school was over Rachel and her sisters returned home to make sure that they had packed up everything. Once they told their father that they were ready they got in the family car and left for their new home. At first, Rachel did not feel at home in Pomona, but she soon made new friends, thanks to her great personality. By the end of the week she was adjusting well, but Thursday afternoon she got a call from one of Tommy's friends. Kimi had called her to invite her to a party; she said she and her friends would pay for the transportation. She asked her father if she could go, and when he said yes she told Kimi to call her back with the details.

The following morning right before class, Kimi called her back and told her how to make it to the club in San Bernardino. As soon as school was over, she rode her bike over to the train station and took a train into San Bernardino. After that she then took a bus and walked the remaining distance. Once she made it into the club she got excited when she spotted Tommy with his friends. She found it odd that his friends began to leave as she approached Tommy since they had organized her transportation. But once she got to Tommy she realized why, he had brought a date with him to the event, a girl he had met only days after they had broken up. Something happened inside Rachel when she saw the other girl; she had been so nice to this guy, even after he lied to her in order to get her to like him and he repaid her by going out with another girl. After the other girl Anita, told Tommy off, she proceeded to do the same. She didn't want to listen to his excuse and made it clear that she never wanted to see him again. Rachel was so mad that she did not notice she stormed out of the club and back onto the street. She boarded the next bus back to the train station and waited for three hours for her train back to Pomona. She spent those three hours contemplating what had happened. She was no longer angry, but she felt embarrassed, and she realized the only way for her to never have to go through such an event again was to become a pessimist.


	2. Prologue: The Ascension

Fourteen years later, Rachel still lived by this philosophy. After college she took the first job she could find, she worked in the accounting department of an office in Los Angeles. She did her work and used her paycheck to pay the rent of her apartment and cover all of her other expenses. Her family and co-workers would often tell her that she never treated herself to anything and she would tell them that it would be for nothing. Rachel thought she would do her work to cover her expenses until the day she retired and then spend the rest of her days living in her apartment. Rachel was always quick to question everything that people said mattered, and that kind of thinking best explains her reaction to Election Day.

On Tuesday, November 8, 2016, Rachel got home from work at six in the afternoon. She had picked up some Chinese food for dinner and laid it on the living room coffee table. She turned on the TV before heading off to her room to change out of her work clothes and returned to the living room in sweatpants and a T-shirt. The TV was on a movie channel she had been watching the night before, but she switched it over to _SNN_. Rachel didn't follow politics, then again she didn't really follow anything, but it was almost mandatory for Americans to tune into a news network on Election Day, even if it was just to have the noise in the background.

Rachel ate her Chinese food as _SNN_ 's Chief National Correspondent Jonathan Ray, a grey haired man in his early fifties, showed the network's Lead Political Anchor, Randolph Plitzner, another gray haired man except he was in his late sixties, where the race stood on the "Magic Wall" as he said, "The point I was trying to make before is that earlier on, remember as you look at this map, live results feeding in, Wendy Rogers is unlikely to win Nebraska, it's just the votes coming in early on. The same with these other states, Illinois perhaps, but Missouri, we don't think so, but Ohio was Democratic last time Randolph was here. It has moved to Republican now, fifty-one to forty-four. And the reason, last time I talked to Randolph I said there's a lot of votes to be counted in all of these rural areas here. They are now filling in for Ronald Thump, so Ohio is shifting Republican as well at the moment, Randolph."

Plitzner had just received important information from the team behind the scenes, and told the audience, "Alright, Jonathan, we have some projections right now. Alright, we project that Ronald Thump will carry a huge prize, Texas, with all of its thirty-eight electoral votes. A big win for Ronald Thump in the state of Texas. Democrats have hoped, but it's not going to happen for them this time around. Ronald Thump also carries Will Rogers' home state of Arkansas with six electoral votes. Ronald Thump gets two more states in his column. Let's take a look at the Electoral College map right now, where it stands with those two states that Ronald Thump has just won. He has now taken the lead, Ronald Thump has one-hundred twenty-eight electoral votes, Wendy Rogers has ninety-seven electoral votes. Remember, two-hundred seventy are needed to win the White House."

Plitzner returned to Ray at the "Magic Wall," talked to reporters at both Rogers' and Thump's rallies, and then discussed the events with two of his coworkers, James Thurman, a dark haired man in his late forties, and Daniela Burns, a blonde haired woman in her mid-forties, before Rachel grabbed the remote and said, "Ugh, so boring. Let's see if _MSNBS_ is any better."

Rachel changed the channel to _MSNBS_ and found a channel playing more lively music when the voice of the Chief Anchor, Abram Newell, a brown haired man with a bit of grey on the side in his late fifties, said, "9:36 PM Eastern Time, let's take a look at where we are. The following states we have as 'too close to call,' starting with Florida, a razor's edge race there. Pennsylvania, too close to call, twenty electoral votes. Ohio, too close to call, Georgia, too close to call, Michigan, too close to call, North Carolina, too close to call, Virginia, too close to call, Minnesota, too close to call, New Hampshire, too close to call. To the electoral race, the race to two seventy, one thirty-seven to one-o-four, advantage Thump."

She kept switching from channel to channel as she ate her dinner. Nothing much happened other than that the race kept getting closer and closer, but she didn't really care. Rachel didn't even matter to vote, citing the fact that she lived in California, a blue state, making her vote worthless. And when she was approached by people asking if she would vote in the congressional election, she reasoned that she lived in a blue state and district, again making her vote worthless. She didn't see the reason why people were so worked up; she thought Rogers, Thump, Germain, Scheinberg, Marston, Melder, Saunders, and the rest of them were all the same.

Ten o'clock had come and all of the networks were fixated on the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Seeing that they were repeating the same things over and over and the fact that she had to get up early tomorrow for work, Rachel decided to go to bed. When many people were either excited or sick to their stomach, she slept like it was any other night. Her alarm went off at seven o'clock as it always did on a work day, signaling that it was time to get up. After getting ready for work and a bit interested in learning who, if anyone, had been declared the winner, she went over to the living room and turned on the TV. _SNN_ was on a commercial break, so she went over to the kitchen to warm up a quick breakfast. A while after putting a Breakfast Croissant in the microwave, _SNN Newsroom_ came back from commercials and the show's two anchors, Benjamin "Ben" Trager, a dark haired man in his mid-forties, and Virginia "Ginny" Royse, a blonde haired woman in her mid-thirties, appeared on screen.

"If you're just joining us, today's top story is one you probably already know," Ben started off by saying.

Ginny interjected, "That's right, Ronald J. Thump has been elected President of the United States."

The TV screen showed the map of the county with the states either in red, blue, or yellow. The majority of the states were either red or blue, but Minnesota, Michigan, and New Hampshire were yellow since they were still too close to call.

When the microwave rang, signaling her food was ready, Rachel headed back to the kitchen as she said to herself, "Eh, what's the worst that could happen?"


	3. Prologue: A New Beginning

The fact of the matter was that the worst things that could happen actually happened. First, the separation of powers was destroyed, the congress and the courts were shut down and its members were mostly disposed of. Then came the erosion of civil liberties, certain people were rounded up and deported, others got to stay with restrictions imposed on them like the armbands with symbols with specific colors, and sometimes numbers, identifying their social standing. And finally came the reconstruction of society, such as having all businesses renamed "Thump" this or "Thump" that.

Even though Rachel had to wear a band with a green Star of David, since she was Jewish, and the number seven, her "attractiveness ranking" from the Fat-Shaming Commission, and went to work at Thump Tech every day of the week for less pay, she just accepted this as the new normal. Every day for a little bit over a year after Thump's inauguration she would get ready for work, pass by Eli, the Deplorable who was stationed in the lobby of Rachel's apartment, drive pass different buildings with Thump's name and image on them, and toil away at her computer as if nothing had change. That was until a series of events put her out of the rut that was her life.

On Friday, March 2, 2018 at around 6:30 AM, Ryan Rodriguez, a dirty blond haired man wearing a button down shirt with a turquoise bolo tie, wandered through the Bel-Air Swap-Meet in the Los Angeles suburb of Bloomington in order to meet up with one of his informants. The swap meet had taken a hit after the mass deportations expelled a large portion of the immigrant Latino community that was the backbone of the swap meet. All that was left were stands run by non-Latinos and stands run by the children of the deported who still viewed the swap meet as a part of them. These stands, along with those run by Asian vendors, were often the target of harassment from Deplorables patrolling the grounds. They loved to heckle racial slurs at the vendors, but didn't seem to mind when they ate Tacos from one of the many food booth for lunch and returned to work with a Churro in their hands.

Ryan passed by various patrons and Deplorables before making his way to a secluded area behind a booth where he found his informants and asked, "Okay, what's going on?"

Ryan's informant, a blind, blond haired, blue eyed man named Jacob Stuart, whom they all called Jake, replied nervously, "We have to get out of here, follow me."

Ryan put his hand on his chest, stopping Jake from walking away, and asked, "Hold on, hold on, you have some news, tell me."

"A pilot, a cargo pilot, she defected yesterday. She says that they're creating a new system to deploy nukes," Jake said, seeing that he wasn't going anywhere.

"System, what kind of system?"

"I can't be talking about this out here, let's go."

"Jake, tell me, what system!"

"It gives more people the ability to launch nukes, that's what I heard!"

"More people the ability to launch nukes?"

"Someone named Alcroft sent her, a software engineer."

"Josh Alcroft? Was it Joshua Alcroft?!"

"I'm not sure, Deplorables passed by before I could learn more."

"Who else knows about this?"

"I don't know! Everything is going to hell. Rogers is right, they're monitoring us!"

Jake's screams caught the attention of two Deplorables who were passing by, and when the two men dressed in their black uniform approached the pair, one asked, "What's going on here? Show us some ID."

When Ryan heard the Deplorables, he put his hands up in the air, and turned his head around to say, "Oh, yes, of course sirs. Let me get my wallet."

He felt as if he had fooled the Deplorables into thinking that he was harmless. Thanks to the fact that both he and Jake had a White appearance, they weren't singled out for a pat-down. When it looked as if Ryan was searching for his wallet, he actually pulled out a pistol. Once he had his weapon out, he spun on his heels and fired a few shots at the Deplorables, hitting them in the chest and head. The two Deplorables fell to the ground, but the sound of a gun going off frightened some of the patrons and vendors in the vicinity, causing them to run away screaming. Other Deplorables on the grounds heard the gunshots and ran towards the area where the noise came from, safely maneuvering through the crowds of White patrons but not thinking twice about violently pushing non-Whites to the ground and even holding some of them for interrogation.

Jake panicked when he heard the sound of alarms and footsteps coming towards them, causing him to scream, "No, what have you done?!"

"Two Deplorables are down," a Deplorable with view of the bodied reported to the others over his walkie-talkie.

"Are you crazy? I'll never be able to get out of here," Jake told Ryan since even though he never let his blindness hold him back, he knew it would be next to impossible for him to escape in during such a chaotic episode.

As Deplorables got even closer to the scene of the crime, Ryan comforted Jake by telling him, "Calm down, calm down, it'll be alright."

When Ryan felt as if he had lured Jake into a false sense of security, he his gun to his back and fired a few shots before saying, "Goodbye, old friend."

Ryan looked at the body of his dead friend lying on the floor with blood spilling out for a few seconds. This moment for him encapsulated the realities of this fight, because even though he had worked with Jake before, he knew he would be dead weight if he helped him escape, and if he left him alive he would most likely reveal secret information after being tortured. With the sound of Deplorables approaching the scene, Ryan ran down the aisle and stopped when he saw an unfastened tarp that formed the back wall of one of the many booths at the swap meet. He picked it up, passed through it, and blended into the rest of the crowd before the Deplorables could single him out.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, outside the hamlet of Chappaqua, New York, a group of armed, middle-aged men and women moved a handcuffed military cargo pilot through the bushes and trees that scattered the area around the home of former President and Secretary Rogers.

As the group got closer to the Rogers' property a guard protecting the home spotted the group, causing the pilot, a dark haired woman named Megan Rimmer, to tell her captors, "That's not Will Rogers."

The guard got closer to Megan and examined her before she said nervously, "So is this where the Rogers live? Look, we're wasting time; I have something to deliver to Secretary Rogers, immediately. I need to speak to her now. I keep telling them, before, before it's too late."

After examining Megan, the leader's first words were, "Cover her up, and be on the lookout. There's probably Deplorables looking for her."

Megan, still clearly nervous, argued with the guard, saying, "Oh, no, no, no. No one knows where I am, I just have to deliver a flash drive to Secretary Rogers, immediately."

The guard signaled the group member behind Megan, and he masked her by putting a black sack over her head to make sure she did not know where she was going. Sure, everyone high enough on the UST hierarchy knew the location they were at, but they didn't want low level workers to learn and then report back to their superiors that there were armed fighters protecting the Rogers.

"No, wait; hold on, I'm on your side. I defected but I didn't take off my uniform," Megan called out, but to no avail. She continued to resist as the group dragged her onto the Rogers' property for questioning.


	4. The Alcroft Extraction

Around half an hour later, Rachel woke up and began to get ready for work. After getting dressed and having a quick bite to eat for breakfast, she got in the elevator and headed down for the lobby.

Just like she did every day, she passed by the Deplorable guard stationed in her apartment, but this time she called out his name, "Eli."

Eli, a man in his early twenties who had a blond mullet and wore one of Thump's infamous red "Making America Terrific Again" caps, looked at the armband on Rachel's arm and replied, "Jew."

Before she could pass the desk, smoke engulfed the outside of the door. Eli got nervous and grabbed his gun, pushed Rachel out of the way, and went to go check what was going on. But when Eli opened the door to get a better look outside, a gun went off and he fell to the floor. Before Rachel could react a group of five armed men and women rushed through the smoke and pushed Eli's body to the side.

"Rachel Alcroft, you're Rachel Alcroft," the first armed man to enter the room said to Rachel, but she did not respond.

"Alright, look, we're going to need you to come with us," the tall man with short brown hair and light skin said as he put his hand on Rachel's shoulder.

Unfortunately for him, Rachel did not take kindly to this strange man resting his hand on her. She turned her body, picked up her right leg, and hit the man in his crotch. He instantly fell down, crying out of pain, and Rachel began to run away from the armed men. She ran down a hallway behind her, then turned left onto an adjacent hallway, and once she reached the end of that hallway she turned to the right where an emergency exit stood. At first it looked as if she was in the clear, but when she ran out the door a man threw himself at her, bringing her to the floor.

The man, a dark skinned man with dark curly hair named Sabu, got off the floor, looked at Rachel who had been disoriented in the fall, and told her in a Middle Eastern accent, "Don't worry, we're here to help. For your own safety and the safety of my partners, don't go running away next time, okay."

Rachel lied on the floor and gave Sabu an upset look for a few seconds. He helped her up and escorted her to the ally adjacent to the apartment complex. When the two made their way to the alley they found Ryan helping to load John Bouchie, the man whom Rachel kicked in the crotch, into the back seat of the SUV they came in.

When Rachel took a look into the vehicle, John began to squirm, and screamed in panic, "Ah, God, no, get that Ballbuster away from me. Oh, God, the pain. They're swollen and I think one of them ascended into my pelvis."

"Don't worry John, we'll get you help," Ryan told the man in order to calm him down.

"Ryan, can I talk to you," Violet Cochran, a woman with long dark hair, told Ryan.

Rachel tried to listen into the conversation but to little avail. Violet was actually telling Ryan that since John was put into such an uncomfortable condition, he, Sabu, and Rachel would have to find another way to get back to the base since there was not enough room now. Ryan wasn't so sure about this since he feared that Rachel would run away from them. Violet conceded to Ryan's argument and went to the trunk of the SUV and returned with a dog's shock color. She placed the collar around Rachel's thigh and gave Ryan the remote.

After watching his partners drive off in the SUV, Ryan went over to Sabu and Rachel and told them, "Okay, listen, we have to get back to the base. I know someone around here who can help us get us there. Rachel, I don't want any trouble from you, or else I'll give you forty-five thousand volts to the leg."

Rachel didn't respond, but instead pushed Sabu out of the way and tried to run away, leading Ryan to press the remote and bring down the escapee.

When she fell to the floor after being shocked, Ryan stood over her and asked, "What part of 'forty-five thousand volts to the leg' did you not understand.

Rachel, Ryan, and Sabu embarked on their journey by walking up north and turning right once they reached West Temple Street. The plan was to walk down the street and pass a few blocks until they reached the location of one of Ryan's friends who could lend them a vehicle. While the three of them walked down the street, Rachel got curious about what they were going to do with her.

"Excuse me, but, where are you taking me?" Rachel asked Ryan.

"You'll learn once we reach our location," Ryan responded.

She didn't think much about the fact that they wouldn't tell her where they were going since they did not seem to be that prepared to be professionals and they were walking out in public.

Instead, Rachel turned to her blond captor and asked him, "Who are you?"

"I'm Ryan, I'm in charge of taking you back to our base," he replied.

She nodded before turning over to her other captor and asking him, "What about you? Oh, and try to be a little bit more open."

Her other captor looked down at her and said, "I'm Sabu Yehia, I came to this country from Yemen as an infant, and now I'm escorting you to our base."

"Okay, so you guys are not going to tell me why you abducted me?" Rachel asked, to which she received no response.

As the three of them walked down the street in silence, Rachel looked up and observed what the city had been turned into during the events that unfolded in the last year. The sky was covered with the pollution created from the factories after all of the environmental regulations were repealed and from the smoke of burning buildings in the distance. Rachel remembered that she was in her apartment one October night of the previous year when she heard the first explosion go off. She was reading in the living room when she heard a large explosion go off outside. She got off the couch, stood next to the window, and saw as the flames rise from a building a couple blocks away from her.

At first she thought that an accident had occurred, but when she listened carefully she noticed the sound of fighter jets in the air. The noise grew louder and louder and the number of explosions got larger. It now was clear what was going on, planes were dropping bombs on buildings throughout the city. Rachel then went over to her television and turned it to the news channel, _TNN_ , to get an update of what was going on. For quite a while, all that was on was the attractive female Blonde anchors who probably didn't know what they were talking about saying that they were expecting a speech from the president.

After about twenty minutes of waiting and more and more explosions going off in the distance, Thump eventually came on TV, live from the Oval Office, and told the people, "Hello everyone, it's me, the President you all voted for. Don't listen to fake news that says I lost the popular vote; they're counting all of the illegal votes casted for Secretary Rogers, nasty woman. Even though I really won by the largest margins in history, there are so many haters and losers out there that don't like me, not good! That's why I and my Defense Secretary, Chief Strategist, and now the Supreme Commander, Michael Kabadaian decided to drop so many bombs on these guys In Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, New York, and Boston. I kept my promise to bomb the shit out of these bad guys, believe me. Me and my cabinet and advisors were in the Situation Room watching the bombs go off. The planes were flying around and when they let go of the bombs they went bing, bang, boom, fantastic! Now, I do this because no politician in the history of the world has ever been treated as terrible as I have, believe me, and now, we're going to take care of them."

The buildings on both sides of the streets seemed to have been maintained as they did not seem to have fire damage. What the buildings did have was propaganda placed all over them. Some of the buildings were draped in the new flag, a take on the infamous Nazi flag. Others had posters with Thump's face on them, and others had quotes like "Making America Terrific Again," "Lock her up," and "Feminism is a Cancer." There was even a large monitor placed on top of the tallest building in the area blasting _TNN_ broadcasts onto the people below. The news was currently on a commercial break, but everyone stopped to look up as Thump came on the screen.

"It's me, President the Ronald, you know, being president is a tough job, but I can do it because I have a great work ethic, believe me. I can handle it so greatly that I can even do a show. That's right; a new season of _Celebrity Protégé_ is coming to _TEN_. Tune in this summer, or else, you're fired," Thump said as he promoted his show, rather than running the country.

The group continued walking down the crowded street without trying to garner much attention; unfortunately Rachel bumped into a scrawny man in his late sixties, who angrily told her, "Hey, watch where you're going. You don't know who you're messing with"

Before Rachel could respond, Ryan jumped in and pleaded with the man by saying, "Oh, no, we're sorry. We don't want any trouble, sorry."

The scrawny man has a friend, a heavy set man also in his late sixties, who pulled him away from the group by saying, "Come on Bob, let's go."

"I would have just thrown her through the window of that car, Mikey. You know, like in the good ol' days," the scrawny man told his friend as they walked away from Ryan, Rachel, and Sabu.


	5. Mightier Than The Sword?

The three continued walking without looking back until they reached a large sand colored building and Ryan told Sabu, "I'm going to look for Adam, don't go anywhere. Here's the remote, press this button if she tries to get away."

Rachel stared Ryan down as he passed her and said, "Don't worry; I learned my lesson last time."

She looked around and saw some Deplorables harassing two Latina women, and seeing that she was next to an Arab man, she asked Sabu, "Hey, would you mind if I stand by the wall?"

"Very well, but remember I have the remote," Sabu replied.

Rachel didn't run away as Sabu thought she would, but went over to the wall of the building where a group of people were hanging around and telling passing people, "Go in peace."

One particular man, a man with dark brown hair, light skin, and brown eyes, wearing a backpack that had a pole with a handle sticking out, caught her attention, and the more she stared at him, he realized that he was being watched, and asked, "Hey, you, come here."

Rachel was a bit unsure as to get closer, but when she got closer the man asked, "I haven't seen you around here."

"I don't usually come down here," she replied.

"Well, I can tell from you're armband that you're Jewish. That makes sense," he said as he pointed at the band on her arm.

Rachel gave the man a confused look, and asked him, "How so?"

"Well, this building right here is the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the headquarters for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles."

"Yeah, that does make sense. So, you're Catholic?"

"Growing up, yes. Nowadays, my wife and I just come here for the community, especially in these difficult times."

Before Rachel could respond, Ryan came up to her, pulled her away, and said, "We have to leave now. This place is about to blow up!"

As she was pulled away from the group, Rachel saw a woman with short curly light black hair, light skin, and dark eyes approach the dark brown haired man who told her, "By the way, my name's Peter, Peter Albany. May peace be with you."

Ryan, Sabu, and Rachel began to walk to the left of the Cathedral, as a tank rolled into the street with a Deplorable on it, screaming into a megaphone, "Citizens of the UST, in the words of the late captain of the Neokosmos Space Station, Clayton Crank, 'The biggest problem we face in Agriculture today is all of those dull-witted Liberals in LA.' Now that real Americans have spoken, you will all receive what you deserve for not participating in making America terrific again!"

Rachel looked around and saw many suspicious people beginning to surround the tank. She also noticed that there were people with snipers set up on the buildings surrounding them. Rachel wanted to know what was going on but Ryan wouldn't tell her, instead he kept pulling her farther and farther away from the tank. Right before the tank passed a man looking out a window from a nearby building; he took out a grenade, detonated it, and dropped it out the window. The explosive lay on the street below and as the tank was halfway over it, the grenade exploded, throwing the tank into the air and burning the people inside. The suspicious people pulled out their weapons and began to shoot the other Deplorables that accompanied the tank. As the firefight began to grow, the civilians in the area ran away from the scene in terror.

As the three of them hid behind the corner of the cathedral, Rachel sarcastically commented, "I'm guessing your friend is a bit busy."

Ryan didn't respond since he was too busy making sure nobody was going to shoot at them. Rachel took a peek out of the corner and saw a little girl with dark skin and black hair crying. She hadn't had the urge to help someone for years, but when she saw this girl, it was almost like if years of emotions burst out. She let herself go from Ryan's grip and ran towards her. Before Ryan was able to shock her for escaping, Sabu pointed out where she was going. Rachel dodged bullets from all sides and scooped the girl from between the crossfire.

The little girl's mother came to grab her daughter from Rachel's grip, and told her, "Gracias señora."

The Deplorables were too busy fighting to notice Rachel, one of them saw the man who dropped the grenade, and told a Deplorable with an AT4, "Hit that room!"

The Deplorable with the AT4 targeted the room and killed the man who had killed the men in the tank. A large chunk of the building exploded, sending debris into the street below. Rachel tried to dodge it but the dust cloud engulfed the area. Ryan could no longer see Rachel, and fearing that she would use this chance to escape, he and Sabu rushed into the conflict. By the time they got to the other corner the dust had settled enough that he could see Rachel trying to get back to them. The Deplorables had shot down the remaining attackers and when they saw that Ryan grabbed Rachel and whispered in her ear that they had to leave immediately, they stopped him for questioning.

"Excuse me sir, where are you going with that Jew and Towelhead?" A Deplorable asked.

Ryan got a bit nervous, but he put his hand over Sabu's arm, turned them around with him, and replied, "These two were some of the attackers, don't worry, I'll take them around the corner and take them out. You know, making America terrific again!"

"Wait, what are you talk...,"Sabu tried to say before Ryan slapped him across the mouth.

"Did I say you could speak, Hodgie?" Ryan responded.

The Deplorable believed Ryan's story, but insisted in taking the two with them by telling him, "Don't worry sir, we'll take them from here."

As other Deplorables began to try to handcuff Rachel and Sabu, Ryan kept interjecting, "No, no, it's okay. I can take care of the situation."

The Deplorable didn't want to discipline a White man, but the more Ryan complained he knew he had to do something, and told him, "Sir, please don't overreact, we're going to need you to give us a statement."

As the Deplorables violently pushed Rachel and Sabu away from the scene of the crime, Peter stood up and screamed, "Hey, let them go!"

Everyone turned to see the dark brown haired man walk towards the street saying, "They weren't attacking you guys. If you don't let them go, then I'll have to get involved."

At first the Deplorables were confused, but they did not take Peter's threat lightly, a threat to which one of them replied, "Hey, stand down or we'll shoot."

"Hey, is that a sword strapped to his back?" One Deplorable pointed out.

Another one of his partners confirmed his suspicions, and said, "Yeah it is. Buddy, haven't you ever heard about not bringing a sword to a gunfight."

"I thought it was never bring a knife to a gunfight," Another Deplorable pointed out.

The Deplorable who got corrected replied, "I know that, it doesn't matter anyways if it's a sword or a knife."

Peter stopped in his tracks as he was surrounded by Deplorables on all sides, he observed them for a while until one of them said, "This is going to be like that movie where that Arab is swinging his sword, but the guy just shoots him. Just fire already!"

When two Deplorables shot at Peter, everyone thought he was a dead man, but he caught them by surprise. He ducked, causing the bullets to hit the Deplorables holding Rachel and Sabu. Ryan ran towards them and the three of them hid behind some debris in order to watch what Peter would do next. When more Deplorables opened fire on him, Peter pulled out his sword. Some of the Deplorables were taken back, but others ran towards him while shooting. Peter deflected some of the bullets aimed at him with his sword, and when Deplorables got close to him he cut them. One Deplorable, the one who called Peter his "buddy," was even so unlucky to be grabbed by the arm, with the sword's tip on his neck.

"Hey, buddy, how you holding up?" Peter asked in a mocking tone before using the Deplorable as a human shield.

The Deplorable took several bullets from one of his partners intended for Peter, screaming in pain for his partner to stop firing. Once he died, Peter let go of him, jumped in the air, and slit through the other Deplorable's black armor. More and more Deplorables kept ganging up on him, but he seemed to be one step ahead. He slid and hit a Deplorable in the knees, causing him to fall down. When it seemed that he was too busy making sure the fallen Deplorable was dead, another one sneaked up behind him, but it was a trap. Peter turned around and jammed his sword through his chest. Ryan, Sabu, and Rachel were all amazed with Peter's skills, he had single-handedly taken out over ten Deplorables by himself. Although, when he was busy making sure all of the Deplorables were dead, one came around from the corner of the street and took aim at him. Peter didn't know that the Deplorable was behind him, but he found out about him when the sound of a gun went off. At first, everyone thought that the Deplorable had gotten Peter, but it turned out that Peter's wife, the woman with short curly light black hair, light skin, and dark eyes, had fired her gun at the Deplorable.

Peter stood up from checking the Deplorables to scream at his wife, "Ione, I felt the bullet graze my hair! I could have been shot!"

"Yeah, could have," Ione remarked in an amused tone.

"You know, it you would have focused this much on that soccer championship back in High School, you could've won," Peter replied.

Ione didn't like Peter's comment about something that happened years ago, so she said, "Hey, I didn't see you on the field."

Peter brushed the comment to the side as Ryan, Sabu, and Rachel got up from their hiding spot, and Rachel said, "Thank you Peter."

He nodded in response before Sabu asked, "Peter, is it? Would you mind cutting through these handcuffs."

"Sure, come here," Peter said before meeting them half ways and releasing them from their restraints with his sword.

Ryan looked at Peter's sword and asked him, "Do you come from some long line of knight who've protected cathedrals for centuries or something?"

"Well, if you mean for decades when you say centuries and if you mean hang outside a church when you say protect cathedrals, then yeah, that's who he is," Ione answered for her husband.

"You joke about us hanging out here, but if it wasn't for us they'd probably be dead now. Thank God we were here to save them," Peter replied.

"Yes, but I had to save you," Ione reminded him.

The tension between the two grew a bit before Ryan interjected and said, "Well, thank you, both of you, for your work, but we have to find a way to get out of the city."

"Why?" Peter asked.

"Well, my friend here is someone who can help us."

"Us? Help you with what?"

"You see, Sabu and I are part of the Resistance."

"You know, you could have said that before," Rachel told Ryan.

Ryan kept his attention on Peter while he asked, "Do you know anyone who would be willing to let us borrow their car? Our previous ride's owner is somewhere over there in that pile of bodies."

Peter thought it over and replied, "Tell you what, we'll take you where you need to know."

"Really, you would do that?"

"Sure, you guys do the hard work that needs to be done. It'll be an honor to help you."

"Wow, thank you so much!"

"Don't mention it."

"I'll call Vesta and ask her if she can take care of the kids for a little longer," Ione informed Peter.

As the group walked towards Peter's car, Rachel got closer to Peter and asked him, "You have kids?"

"Yeah, two four-year-old twins, George and Abigail," Peter answered her.

"Another question, could you use that sword of yours and cut off this collar around my thigh?"

Ryan overheard the conversation and gave her a dirty look as he waived around the collar's remote in his hand, to which Rachel responded, "It was just a joke, God!"

She got even closer to Peter than she did before and told him, "Not really, you can just slice it off and I'll run away."


	6. The Dartboard

Meanwhile, across the country in New York City, the effects of Thump's rule were being felt. The once "Big City" was being trimmed down to ease the President's fragile ego. By a Presidential Decree, all buildings in the president's hometown of New York City could not be taller than any building he owned or that had his name on it before he became president. From his office on the top floor of Thump Tower, Supreme Commander Kabadaian oversaw the deconstruction of many famous buildings during his time off. As Thump didn't really care about being president, Kabadaian told him that he would take control of everything. Thump could go off and spend his days at the Thump National Golf Club in various cities, or his Florida home, Mer-a-Lac, while Kabadaian ran the country from the White House, the former Capitol Building turned personal mansion, or his office at Thump Tower in New York.

In an adjacent room, two mid-level overseers of military projects waited for their own meetings with the Supreme Commander. One of these overseers was Anthony Collins, a blond haired man in his early thirties with a huge scar on his right cheek. He wore a light olive green shirt under his black uniform, a uniform with a name tag on the right and decorated in medals and Nazi paraphernalia. On the right, Anthony wore lapel pin of the emblem of the flag of the UST, the word "Thump" written four times to make the shape of a swastika, and a Reichsadler, the German Imperial Eagle, holding a swastika with its claws. All of the swastikas mirrored the one he had tattooed on his left temple, a tattoo that peered out of his hair.

Anthony was the maternal cousin of Angelica Pickles, the former Attorney General. She had disappeared in September of last year and the position had been vacant for half a year. He thought that if he sat down and talked with Kabadaian, he could get the position and the mansion his cousin had made out of the former Department of Justice Building. His only competition was his ally and friend, Reggie Greenfield. The two rose through the ranks in the Deplorable Corps, commanding various Deplorables throughout the Boston area. The two respected each other, but they would undermine each other if it served their purpose. Unfortunately for Anthony, Reggie knew the real reason why he wanted the position.

As the two waited to meet with Kabadaian, his personal assistant, a blonde haired woman named Morgan, came into the room and said, "Lieutenant Collins, Supreme Commander Kabadaian will see you now."

"Look out Reggie, there's going to be a new Attorney General when I come out of that room," Anthony said in a cocky tone as he adjusted his uniform.

His dark haired friend looked him straight in the eye and warned him, "Careful there, Anthony, don't forget I know the real reason why you want the position. If you need a reminder of Supreme Commander Kabadaian's views on this matter, I suggest you look at the dartboard in his office."

He didn't think much of Reggie's comment and brushed it off. Anthony's Deplorable guards got out of their seats and followed their commander into Kabadaian's office. When they reached the end of the short hallway between the waiting room and the office, Morgan stopped and stood to the left to let Antony pass through. Anthony took in the office; it was lit with the light coming in from the large windows in front of him. The wall behind him was covered in monitors in order to communicate with his subordinates, and the sides of the room were full of cabinets and tables covered in documents.

Anthony caught a glimpse of the dartboard Reggie was talking about. There it was, the standard black circular dartboard with black and white triangles and curved green and red lines. The only difference between this dartboard and others were the extra targets Kabadaian placed on it. On the lower left side he had put a picture of two people in an embrace Anthony identified as the Lannister twins, Jaime and Cersei, from the television series Game of Thrones. The picture on the right side was a bit more complex. It appeared to be a Valentine's Day promotional picture from the Lifetime network. There was a bunch of small red hearts blended into a red background with white sparkles spread around. In the center of the picture was the golden outline of a heart with the image of two blond teens, a boy in a blue shirt on the left and a girl in a red shirt with a pink hairband and bow on the right, staring into each other's eyes right in the middle. Anthony couldn't identify who these two were; all he could think of was the uncanny resemblance they shared with him and his cousin, Angelica. He barely had a chance to read the two pieces of text, "Flowers In The Attic" on the top and "I love you like a brother," before he moved his attention to the image in the middle. They seemed to be pictures of two brown haired people taken during a secret surveillance mission. He quickly identified them as the infamous DeVille twins that rose to prominence after their secret love affair was revealed by Kabadaian around the time Angelica went missing. As he was contemplating the images on the dartboard, Anthony almost bumped into Kabadaian's desk.

Anthony stopped himself in time, but the Supreme Commander didn't turn around, he observed the city out of the windows with his arms behind his back as he said, "It's unfortunate to hear what happened in Michigan, Lieutenant Collins. After months of secrecy and hard work, and now this."

He sighed before he turned around, faced Anthony, and continued saying, "There are rumors going around the city, there seems to be pilot going around and telling people what we're up too."

Kabadaian walked away from his desk and headed towards Anthony as he continued, "If the truth gets out, more and more liberal nations will aid the Resistance."

"Once the system is complete, Supreme Commander, Liberals will be of little concern," Anthony replied, trying to assure Kabadaian that this was nothing.

Kabadaian didn't take too kindly to Anthony's views and reminded him as he got so close to him that Anthony could feel his breath on his skin, "Our time has run up, Lieutenant Collins, neither President Thump nor I will tolerate any more delays. You have made time an ally of the Resistance. I recommend you take action to stop this rumor from spreading by any means necessary."

"The success or failure of your actions will heavily influence my decision," Kabadaian said after he returned to area behind his desk, referring to Anthony's candidacy for Attorney General.

Anthony stared the Supreme Commander straight in the eye and told him, "I will succeed."

Anthony quickly turned around on his heels and sped out of the room with his two Deplorable guards following suit. Kabadaian signaled to Morgan to bring in his next appointment. As she walked down the short hallway, Kabadaian grabbed four darts from a container on his desk. He aligned them in his hand and threw them at the dart board. All four of the darts hit someone; one dart hit each of the two blond teens on the lower right of the board, but he was much prouder of the other two shots. Each one of the DeVille twins had a dart going through their head, similar to the blond teens but it was much more satisfying for Kabadaian to see that he had gotten them. Before Reggie walked in, Kabadaian returned to the position he was in when Anthony walked in. He looked out the window and observed the other buildings, decorated in Thump posters and the flag of the UST he had designed. Life was almost perfect, almost perfect.


	7. Interrogation

As Anthony came up with a plan to take care of the pilot issue, Megan wad being kept tied down to a chair in the living room of the Roger's home. She still had the black sack over her head and had her hands cuffed. The guards had even spun her around before taking her too inside the Roger's property, out of fear that if she got out she would tell her superiors where exactly they were operating. The level of paranoia in the people occupying the premise was expected, but it still clouded their judgment. If Megan were to escape and tell her superiors about her ordeal, the Deplorables would just raid the property and find them, no matter what.

Megan listened to her surroundings and overheard footsteps coming towards her and the voice of a woman that said, "Lies, deceptions; like when we tell our kids that voting is important because every vote everywhere counts."

The footsteps stopped and the woman asked one of the guards, "Let's see who we're dealing with?"

The guard handed the woman an official ID card of the UST Military they had found on Megan, which the woman read, "Megan Rimmer, Cargo Pilot."

As the woman read from the ID card, Megan nodded her head, mumbled a bit, and then said, "Yes, that's me."

"We also found this in her pockets when we captured her," one of the guards said as he handed over a small object to the woman.

The woman observed the object, a long black flash drive, she turned it around in her hand as Megan replied "Hold, hold, hold on a second, you did not capture me, I gave myself up, I defected. I defected."

"More and more lies every day," the Woman said, eerie about Megan's true intentions.

Megan quickly replied in a nervous tone with a hint of frustration, "A lie? Do you think I would risk my life for a lie?"

"We don't have time for this. I have to speak to Secretary Rogers before it's too," Megan continued before being distracted when one of the guards removed the sack from her head, revealing to Megan who she was arguing too.

"Late," Megan continued, stunned when she realized she had been arguing with the one, the only, Wendy Rogers.

Megan was so clearly taken aback from the presence of the 70 year old blonde haired woman wearing one of her trademark pantsuits that she stumbled to put together a sentence, replying, "Oh...kay, no, yeah, you're...um, that's for you."

"I just want to add that I gave it to them, they did not find it," Megan added as she gave the guards a snarled look.

"I gave it to them. Joshua Alcroft, he told me to find you," Megan told Rogers as he stared her.

Rogers never moved her eyes away from Megan after she examined the flash drive. She watched as Megan first looked at her in awe and then when she tried to argue with the guards. The time had come to decide Megan's fate, would she live or would she die.

She though it over, without moving her eyes from Megan, and after a few seconds she replied with one word, "Barn"

"The b...b...barn?" Megan asked, confused about what that meant.

"What? Wait, Josh Alcroft sent me!" She cried out as the guards put the sack on her head again, untied her from her restraints, and pulled her up from the chair.

"He told me to find you!" She exclaimed as the guards took her away from the living room.


	8. Time To Recollect

The guards spun her around like they did before they brought her too far into the property. They pushed her around until they reached the door to the backyard. She could feel the overgrown grass touching the leg of her pants as they relocated her to the barn. Once they reached their location and she was pushed into the building, they removed the sack to reveal two cages in the middle of what used to be a nicely kept living room. All the furniture was pushed to the sides to make room for these enraptures made out of black metal bars. The guards removed the handcuffs and pushed her into the cell on the right.

Once the guards left the room, Megan sighed and began to think about what it was that she could have done to deserve all of this. Could it have been because of the way she used to torment boys on the playground all those years ago just for their attention? Or could it have something to do with the fact that she was a pilot for the Thump military in what is considered, for all intents and purposes, "enemy territory?" Megan guessed that her life's experiences had changed the way she viewed the world.

Megan was born in Livingston, Texas in 1989. Her mother, Sarah, had died in a car crash right after she was born, leaving her under the protection of her father, Ernest, whom everyone just called Ernie. She didn't remember much about her infancy because right before her second birthday her father had been fired from his job in the local lumber industry. She really only remembered her life in Yucaipa, California, the town which the family moved to in order for her father to have a job. Ernie had always been quite bitter about certain subjects, but they really manifested themselves after he got fired. As a single father, he raised his daughter to be tough and not to "take shit from no boy." Ignoring the double negative, Megan took this information to heart and make sure any boy she liked would not give her "shit" by testing them. She would do to them the only thing she knew, fight with them. Fighting was all that her father taught her and the only thing she ever saw at the home. Pushing them around and calling them names that sounded like their real names were just her way of letting the boys know that she would not be so easily manipulated.

While her father taught her ideas that some could interpret as feminist concepts, Ernie always told Megan that she was not a "goddamn carpet-munching feminist." He didn't want his daughter exposed to the ideas of the "radical leftists" or of the "globalists," terms he used to describe someone who didn't agree with him. Ernie even believed that forty-second president, Will Rogers, and his _NAFTA_ trade deal was the reason why he had lost his job, even though Rogers entered the White House and signed it into law in 1993, two years before he lost his job. He did not find that many people who shared his views on various issues in his new community, but that came to an end on October 7, 1996. When Megan was just seven, _Bat News_ , a twenty-four/seven news network with a conservative spin, launched. _Bat News_ helped reinforce the believe system that Ernie held, and within a decade he had emerged himself in the alt-right community that flourished online.

The rise of the internet had made it possible for Ernie to communicate with others like him, and nothing had as much as _Intelbattle_. The infamous radio show by Lex Johns became a huge hit once he began uploading webcasts of his program online. Ernie always made sure to tune into _The Lex Johns Show_ when it came on, Mondays through Fridays from eleven in the morning to two in the afternoon, Central Standard Time, and Sundays from four to six in the afternoon, Central Standard Time. Sometimes he listened to the radio broadcast while he was at work, but he always tuned into the video whenever he could. He listened to every paranoid and asinine thing Johns said, such as the government has a "weather weapon" that "can create and steer groups of tornadoes," that the government puts "chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay," and probably the most offensive thing he ever said, that the tragic Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, a "false flag" operation planned by the administration of Barakah Oyama as a pretext to take people's guns away. Megan often heard her father talking about how he was going to strike back at the "radical leftists" whom he mistakenly thought were behind the world's troubles.

Megan remembered one night when she was ten and she got up for a drink of water she heard her father say, "You know Michael, sometimes I just want to fill my car with explosives and crash it into the LA County Democratic Party headquarters."

The man who Ernie had invited over for a beer, then Yucaipa PD Sergeant Michael Kabadaian, replied, "Completely agree, and the Turkish consulate too."

This would have been all that Megan knew about politics and government if it weren't for her uncle Craig, Ernie's brother, back in Texas. Craig was a conservative, but not as extreme as Ernie was. Unfortunately, whenever the two met up Craig would never correct his brother, turning a blind eye to his outlandish statements. In fact, when Thump announced his candidacy, Craig did not initially support him, he instead chose Texas senator Ed Ruiz, whom Thump labeled "Lyin' Ed." When the Republican Party could not make Ruiz their nominee, Craig bit his tongue and supported Thump. The only reason why he supported him was because he believed that Rogers was untrustworthy. He saw the private email server and the attack on the Benghazi consulate as signs she could not be trusted with power while Ernie took it another way. He saw all of the Rogers "scandals" as signs that she and Will were "interdimensional vampires" that ran "pedophile pizza parlors."

As Election Day got closer, Ernie was more than convinced the New World Order, the Democratic Party, and Satan would rig the election to make Rogers president. Certain that California was "rigged" beyond the point that his and his daughter's votes would make a difference, he quit his job, forced Megan to quit her job as a commercial pilot, and moved the family back to Texas. His "gamble" paid off when Thump won the state, even though everyone was certain he would. The only problem was that neither of them had jobs now, luckily Ernie had complete confidence in Thump's promises to bring back jobs, and in a way he did. The night after Thump's inauguration Ernie saw a tweet from his old friend, the new Secretary of Defense. In the tweet, Kabadaian called for Thump's supporters to either come to meet him in Baltimore or to"watch Fake News and take action locally." Since Baltimore was too far away, Ernie chose the latter and stayed home.

The next day he woke up at seven and did something he hadn't done in years, watched the "mainstream media." It wasn't that long until the news began to report on the coup going on in DC. The tweet made sense now; it was his duty to take down the corrupt establishment wherever it was. He grabbed two guns and a lot of ammunition, woke Megan from her sleep, and the two of them made the hour and a half drive to Houston. Once they arrived in the city center, Ernie gave his daughter one of the guns and told her to shoot anyone that stood up to the "patriots" redesigning the country. Ernie began shooting protesters as soon as he was out of his truck, ending the day after shooting over eighty people. Harris County, the county Houston is in, was won by Secretary Rogers, meaning many of her supporters came out to strike back against the terrorists attacking the local government. One of them, a young man with dark hair, was within striking distance of Megan before she shot him in his tracks. Megan began to panic as she saw the man's life drain out of him as he lied on the floor. He tried to throw the giant rock he was hoping would take Megan out, but it easily fell out of his hands due to his lack of strength. Megan held back tears as the man spent his final seconds of life staring straight into her eyes. She didn't shoot anyone else that day.

Once the dust cleared Ernie finally had another job, he was now a member of a Paramilitary group, he was now a Deplorable. With the negative turn the economy took after the rise of Thump, a job in the military seemed to be the only realistic career choice for Megan. Even though she voted for Thump, she knew she did it under duress. She didn't even know if she was a conservative or not since she didn't really agree with what her father or uncle said. She believed she could have been a regular conservative if her uncle had stood up to her father, but like many conservatives, he was a spineless tool who thought they could use Thump to get what they want, unaware that the nationalist sentiment they let grow got to powerful for them to control and eventually took them down.

To please her father, Megan used her history as a commercial pilot to become a cargo pilot for the military. Her father was a bit disappointed that she did not become a Deplorable, instead she joined an organization that had so many defectors. However, he still took pride in knowing that his daughter was making America terrific again. Megan, on the other hand, viewed her job as a way to escape from her father's grip. Seeing that man die made her rethink everything she had done. She would often contemplate the kind of life she could have on her daily flights across the country. She eventually came to the realization that she had to do something about the Thump regime. She heard stories about a rebellion brewing, the Resistance they called it, and came to the conclusion that she needed to aid them any way she could; all she needed was an opportunity. Megan would find the opportunity in a Software Engineer working at the same instillation she was based in.

Josh Alcroft was a Software Engineer for the Thump regime's Advanced Weapons Department; his job was to create system to decentralize the nation's nuclear weapons. Josh designed seven stations around the country that would control all of the nukes in that state and in surrounding states. Only Station One, a station in Virginia close to the capitol, could control all of the nukes. Megan worked at Station Four in Royal Woods, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit that had been turned into a military base. Station Four controlled all of the nuclear weapons in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri. According to Alcroft, Michigan was chosen as the site of this particular instillation in order to "give the finger" to Rogers and her supporters since Thump won there "bigly."

According to Josh, he was taken from his work and forced to design the software for these stations all over the country. But, when he heard of Megan's disillusionment, he offered her a way to escape. He had recorded a message for the Resistance that would help them in their fight against the Thump Regime. He could not leave the facility, but since Megan was a cargo pilot she could. He also didn't know where the Resistance actually was, but he had come across the residence of the Rogers family while he set up the system he created. Josh gave the flash drive to Megan and gave her the location of the Rogers home, and she took them with her. When she landed at the military base created on the land of the former John F. Kennedy International Airport, she told the officials that she would like to go off the base, and miraculously she was granted permission to do so.

Her journey through the city was not as different to her life on the base; she faced constant sexism from Deplorables but still lived a better life than most people. She had to ask many people for help to get to the Rogers home in Chappaqua, and eventually the story that a cargo pilot was in search of the former presidential candidate. While she was having trouble finding people, things got incredibly worse when a group of armed men and women grabbed her from the street and put her in the back of their van. They drove for a bit over an hour until the van stopped in an area covered in trees and bushes. A man handcuffed Megan and dragged her through forest until they reached a white gate where another guard stood watching. The guard standing watch was the same guard that had ordered the others to cover her head with the black sack, putting all of the events that had just transpired into play.


	9. A Chance At Redemption

Peter and Ione kept their promise and took Rachel, Ryan, and Sabu to their destination, the headquarters of the Resistance's Los Angeles division. Nestled in the mountains surrounding the suburbs of the nation's most populous city, the base was hidden away so that the UST could not find their location. The area surrounding the headquarters was covered in cement, this acted as runways for planes they hid in large tents and underneath loose brush. These planes ranged from standard civilian planes members had donated to the cause to heavily armed fighter jets that had been stolen from military bases during raids or when a member of the standard military defected. In the center of the military base stood a building that had been constructed quickly since the Resistance did not have time to waste. The local leadership, military officials, and the rest of the members all met in this building.

Before they reached the premises, Ryan showed his ID to a guard who stopped Peter before he got too close to the base. After about five minutes of driving, Peter stopped the car in front of the building. Ryan and Sabu got out of the car and headed off into the building while a guard approached the car and took Rachel to a holding cell on the right side of the building. After about twenty minutes, the same guard approached Rachel, now wearing handcuffs, and escorted her across the building. During the three minutes it took to cross the building Rachel saw many of the local Resistance fighters during their time off. Some were playing card games; others were repairing various weapons they would most likely use on Deplorables very soon. A voice came over the intercom and called a maintenance crew to Runway Three, Rachel guessed that someone must have spilled something and it made a mess.

The room Rachel had been taken into by the guard was dark and littered with monitors of various types. The outskirts of this room were littered with personnel sitting at their desk with headphones on. These men and women were intercepting private government transmissions, reading emails and listening into conversations sent from officials of all ranks. In the center of the room was a large table with monitors standing on polls all around. The guard sat Rachel down on a chair so that she could be interrogated by a tanned skin, black haired, dark eyed, woman.

After about ten minutes of Rachel answering every question with a lie, the woman, Alex Vasquez, asked, "So, you're telling men your name is Rebecca Lisa, correct?"

Rachel looked over at Ryan who rested his back on one of the monitors before she faced the woman and nodded in reply. Every person in the room, from Alex, the various other high ranking officials in the room, the guards standing watch, and especially Ryan, did not believe a word Rachel had just said.

In response, Alex replied, "Imagine what would happen to you if you told the Deplorables your name was the first names of your older and younger sisters, Rachel Alcroft? Daughter of Joshua Alcroft, Software Engineer at Cal Poly Pomona before working for Thump's Advanced Weapons Department, are you not?"

The tall, brown haired man who led the local branch of the Resistance, Jeffrey Petersen, approached the opposite side of the table before Rachel could ask, "What's going on here?"

Jeffrey straightforwardly replied, "This is a chance for you to do the right thing. You might be able to help us"

"I believe you've been acquainted with our intelligence captain, Ryan Rodriguez?" Jeffrey said as he pointed to Ryan.

Before Rachel could even respond, Ryan approached her and asked, "When was the last time you spoke with your father?"

"Early January of last year," she replied.

"Do you have an idea where he's been all this time?"

"I'd like to think his body's decaying in a ditch somewhere after some Deplorables beat him to death. It's a lot easier that way."

"Easier than what? Knowing he's a part of the Thump war machine."

"Sorry, I've never really cared about politics to come up with my own opinions on such matters," Rachel replied in a way that let her tell the truth without giving the Resistance valuable information.

"We're on a strict schedule here. If you're not going to help us, we'll send you back to the Deplorables with a note saying you were helping the Resistance; after we break your hands and vocal cords so you can't blab about our location or what we were discussing," Alex said as she had grown impatient with Rachel's answers.

With the fear of being severely damaged Rachel realized the severity of the situation and replied, "Okay, look, I didn't even know my father was working for Thump until today. I lost contact with him after Kabadaian's Purge, so I really don't know where he is."

"Don't worry about that, we have a lead that might help us find your father. Wendy Rogers is reporting that she has a UST pilot in her custody with valuable information," Ryan added.

Rachel was completely confused by the situation and asked, "Wendy Rogers? Then why do you need me, I'm sure you all voted her? I'm pretty sure she would hand over the information over to you."

"Yes, we voted for her, but many people in the Resistance, especially in our division, don't believe she is Progressive enough. They believe she embodies the establishment that has their own interests in mind while in government. Not to mention the more conservative members simply don't like her. This schism in the Resistance has made our relationship with her very complicated. But now we have no choice but to mend our relationship," Jeffrey said, clearly distraught by the reality that the Resistance could not truly function as a single unit because of a few, but influential, nitpicky members.

"But what does this have to do with my father?" Rachel asked.

Jeffrey looked at Alex, who in turn looked at Ryan, who said, "The pilot that Rogers captured is a defector, she's claiming that Thump is building a system to decentralize his nuclear arsenal. The pilot is also saying she has a message from your father."

"We have to get our hands on this information in order to proceed with the next phase of our plan," Jeffrey added.

"Captain Rodriguez's mission is to authenticate the pilot's claims, and if possible extract your father," Alex claimed.

"It's obvious now that he is critical for the development of this system. Seeing that you're Joshua's daughter, we're hoping Rogers will hand over the pilot and your father's message to you. Once we get our hands on both of these sources of information, we hope to find your father so that he can help us destroy the system," Jeffrey said.

Rachel nearly broke down in tears after hearing all of this. She kept her tears from showing themselves as she thought over what exactly she would do. It was at this moment that she noticed that a young man blond hair, dressed in a dress shirt and blazer, walked over to the table from behind the monitor. The man was head of the cyber-warfare department of the Resistance's LA branch, a man by the name of Zack Wehrenberg. All he did was stand right of Jeffrey and stare at Rachel with his soft eyes that begged for her help.

Zack's stare opened up Rachel's mind to the possibility of collaboration, leading her to ask, "And what if I decide to help you guys?"

"We'll make sure you go free," Jeffrey responded, promising Rachel that the Resistance would leave her alone after this ordeal was over.


	10. Preparing For Takeoff

In the end, Rachel agreed to help the Resistance find her father by accompanying Ryan and Sabu on a top secret mission to Wendy Roger's home in New York. In addition, after hearing that the three people they brought over to this secret base were on a mission, Peter and Ione volunteered themselves as security. After Ryan vouched for them when officials grew concerned that two civilians, who could have easily been spies, wanted to become part of the mission. Ryan assured the officers that Peter and Ione were not a threat to them, he even told them that they had saved his, Sabu's, and Rachel's lives by killing all of those Deplorables in LA.

After about an hour of prepping the small plane, a Cessna 421, that would take the five of them across the country without garnering attention from the authorities. Ryan and Rachel, who was no longer wearing handcuffs, walked out of the main entrance of the building to the runway, passing all of the other fighters. Even though Rachel no longer had her hands cuffed, she still wore the dog collar around her thigh. She played it off as something they forgot to do, but in reality they left in place as a precaution since Rachel was so unpredictable.

As the crew loaded their supplies onto the plane, Alex walked onto the cement floor outside and called out, "Captain Rodriguez, may I have a word?"

Ryan signaled to Rachel that he would go and see what Alex wanted, leaving her to load the rest of the supplies onto the plane.

As Rachel loaded the supplies, Sabu, who was prepping the inside of the plane, turned around and said, "I see the council is sending you on our mission to Chappaqua."

"Well, apparently I'm very special," Rachel replied after giving it a thought.

"I don't like that, sending a Zionist with us," Sabu commented.

Rachel stopped to think about what Sabu was talking about as he added, "What do I know, just that Thump and the Israelis use the same tactics of discrimination against people who rightfully descent."

As Rachel contemplated Sabu's comments on Zionists and Jews, clearly a narrative popular in his native Arab Muslim community that rubbed off on him, Ryan and Alex stood to the side of the plane and held a secret discussion.

Alex spoke to Ryan in a language that Rachel didn't understand when she told him, "Su padre es vital para el Departamento de Armas Avanzadas de Thump. Olvídate de lo que oíste allí, no habrá extracción. Lo encuentras y lo matas."

(Her father is vital to Thump's Advanced Weapons Department. Forget what you heard in there, there will be no extraction. You find him, you kill him.)

One thing that made working with Alex very difficult was that she had her own agenda. Unlike Jeffrey, the leader of her division and her superior, she was much more willing to make an aggressive move. Alex thought Jeffrey was weak when it came to fighting the UST; he wanted to have the international coalition of Canada, and European and Asia-Pacific nations handle the threat while she would rather have the local forces fight the Deplorables and the UST army. The only reason she remained on the council was the fact that she and some of her friends, Clover Baker and Samantha Hale, used their family's money to finance the Resistance. The money flowing in from these Beverly Hills families had been enough to make the other members look the other way when it came to Alex's positions, but this arrangement had begun to deteriorate in the past few months. The straw that would eventually break the camel's back came when Alex went against the council's back and ordered Ryan to kill Josh because she thought he, like Rachel, was compromised and could not be trusted to help the Resistance.

Ryan nodded after receiving the orders, made his way back to the plane, and helped Peter and Ione load the last of the supplies.

"Don't take it personal when Sabu insults you, he's got some pretty strong beliefs. That's what happens when you grow up in a very Conservative community," Ryan told Rachel as he has assumed Sabu had said something about Jews.

"Why does she get a gun and I don't," Sabu blurred out to place his friend's attention away from him and on Rachel.

Ryan turned to look at Rachel and saw her holding a pistol, to which she replied, "Don't worry, I've figured it out."

"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. Give it to me," Ryan commanded Rachel.

Sabu, Peter, and Ione, turned to face Rachel as she said, "We're going to Wendy Rogers' house, don't you think the place is surrounded by Deplorables."

"That's not the poi...where did you get it?"

"I found it in the building."

"I think I saw her take it from Commander Pickles when he wasn't looking," Sabu interjected.

Ryan stood there quietly for a few seconds before Rachel said, "Trust is a two way street."

With no way out of the situation, Ryan simply turned around and sat in the pilot's seat as Sabu asked, "You're going to let her keep it? Would you like to know the odds of her using it against you?"

Ryan said nothing as he buckled his seatbelt, to which Sabu replied, "I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it's high."

"Let's get going," Ryan said before he put on his headphones.

"Very high," Sabu added.

Both Ryan and Sabu, pilot and co-pilot, ignited the plane and checked it's logistics before heading off. A crewman closed the door of the plane from the outside as Rachel, Peter, and Ione watched. Rachel turned the pistol's safety switch on before putting it in her pocket. As the plane taxied to the runway, Rachel looked out the window and thought about what Sabu had said. "I think I saw her take it from Commander Pickles when he wasn't looking." She knew that Pickles wasn't a common surname and that she was close to Yucaipa, but it couldn't possibly have been Tommy she stole it from, right? After the plane made it to eighty-five knots, Ryan got the plane off the ground. Alex stood by and watched the plane take off and turn left, the direction the East Coast was in. As soon as the plane was high enough she turned around and headed back inside. She couldn't take his mind off the fact that the fate of the Resistance was now in the hands of a UST military engineer's lying daughter. The last person from the base to see the plane was a century guard on watch from his station on the top of a tower on the outskirts of the headquarters.


	11. Capture

Josh Alcroft's big break came when he was signed on as the Head Creator of the _Super Monkey Pummel_ video game series. When Rachel was only three years old, Josh, alongside his wife and mother of his three daughters, Miriam, hosted a small dinner for a Yamaguchi Industries representative named Takeshi Nakamura. Mr. Nakamura was sent to Redlands by the President of Yamaguchi Industries, Seiichiro Hasagawa. Yamaguchi Industries had just bought the rights to the _Super Monkey Pummel_ series and Josh was hoping to work on the series' fifth incarnation. Rachel remembered getting out of bed and watching the dinner party from behind the archway that leads into the dining room. She remembered seeing her parents and Mr. Nakamura drinking some wine her mother had bought for the occasion.

"What's the matter, Rachel?" Josh asked as he picked up his second child.

Josh then proceeded to pick up Rachel, walk upstairs to her room, and tuck her back in as he said, "Okay, time to go to bed, Shayna Punim."

Miriam stayed down stairs with Mr. Nakamura while Josh was upstairs. Two years later Miriam had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, a disease common among Ashkenazi Jews. Rachel remembers standing next to the hospital bed with her father and her sisters, holding her mother's hand during her last minutes of life. Her switched back from the sweet memory of her father's hug before after tucking her in again and the tragic memory of her mother taking her final breaths before she passed.

The shaking of the plane as it descended had awoken Rachel from her dream. She took deep breaths after realizing she was in the plane with the rest of the crew instead of either her room or the hospital.

"We're landing now, you have the controls," Ryan told Sabu.

Ryan left the cockpit, walked into the seating area to see Rachel looking out the window, and commented, "That's New York City on the horizon, or what was once New York City. It's now called _Thump Presents New York City: The Fantastic Home of Thump Tower_."

Ryan returned to the cockpit to help Sabu land the plane since it was 10:15 PM local time and extremely dark outside. The plane had made a stop to refuel at a Resistance base in Saint Louis, and now that they had arrived at their location, Ryan and Sabu searched for a clear space to land the plane. There was an empty space in between Chappaqua and the Thump National Golf Club Westchester, oddly enough the only golf club in the area that would accept the Rogers as members because of the security teams that followed them, was perfect for landing the plane. Once they landed, Ryan and Sabu turned the plane around in order to be able to take off once the mission was over. It was decided that Ryan, Rachel, Peter, and Ione would go off to find Secretary Rogers while Sabu would stay back and watch the plane.

The group wandered through the dark forest with the light of their phones illumiating the way for about five minutes before Rachel asked, "So, much longer until we reach Rogers' home?"

It was at that point that nine Evzones, a group of armed men and women that protected the Rogers during the age of Thump, jumped out of the brush with flashlights and began to surround the group. Peter was ready to pull his sword out and slay the soldiers but Ryan signaled him not to, fearing that this would lead to more hostilities and distrust between the Resistance and Secretary Rogers.

"Can't you see we're not Thump supporters? Like, we've got women with us," Peter said as two Evzones tied his hands with zip ties.

As two Evzones tied Rachel's hands like they did to Peter and the rest of the group, she exclaimed, "You won't kill them or me if you know what's good for you!"

"And why is that?" Asked Ralph, the commander of the Evzones.

"Because I'm the daughter of Joshua Alcroft," Rachel replied, to the Evzones' surprise.

"Take them all prisoners!" Ralph exclaimed, leading the Evzones to put black sacks over the heads of the group, just like they did to Megan.

Ralph and his militia dragged the group through the forest and onto the Rogers' property. They took Ryan, Peter, and Ione into the same barn that they had put Megan in. Once inside, they stripped them all of their weapons and placed the three of them in the black cell on the left. The guards took all their weapons and dumped the on the floor in front of the cages where they would be in sight but out of reach. One of the guards even made a comment about how heavy Peter's backpack felt, even though only Erebus, his sword, was inside. Ryan tried to escape when the guard wasn't looking but he hit him in the head with the butt of his rifle as Ryan tried to sneak out through the then open door. The guards then closed the door and locked them in before leaving the room.

Rachel received a different kind of treatment; Ralph believed it was possible she was the daughter of Joshua Alcroft, so he decided not to lock her in the cage with the others. He brought Rachel in through the front door, capturing the attention of all of the Evzones inside. The room was filled of mostly middle-aged men and women passing time by playing card games, like at the Resistance base in LA. There were a few younger people inside, but the majority of the men and women were mostly middle-aged since they were the group most likely to truly support Secretary Rogers during the election. The younger voters were primarily drawn to the Independent Vermont Senator Barney Saunders whose positions concerning college education and tax reform, alongside his "outsider" personality drew in a youth who had grown up in a political environment they viewed as corrupt and out of touch with the common man. Secretary Rogers ended up winning the Democratic primary and got the party's nomination, much to the dismay of Saunders and his supporters.

Rogers and Saunders, two people who bashed each other during the primaries, more or less buried the hatchet and proceeded to attempt to bring down Thump. Saunders tried to transfer his support to Rogers, and while most of them did, there were some holdouts who believed the lies that originated from right-wing propaganda outlets that painted the Secretary in a negative light. While some of these holdouts ended up voting for Thump, others chose third party candidates in order to cast a "protest vote." The majority of the "protest vote" crowd chose Green Party candidate Lil Berg, a woman who believes that Wi-Fi is dangerous to children's brains, or Libertarian Party candidate Barry Jackson, a man who did not know what the Syrian city of Aleppo was and could not name a single world leader. In other words, every candidate besides Rogers were utter buffoons who could not be trusted to lead the world's most powerful nation, but alas a large segment of the population did not or would not open their eyes to the truth until it was too late.

The stare of a man named Demetrius, a Black man in his mid-forties from Michigan, caught Rachel's attention because he seemed to be more interested than suspicious like the others. It was almost as if he was examining someone he had heard so much about in recent months. Demetrius didn't have much time to study Rachel since Ralph kept pushing her through the crowds in order to get to the hallway.

Meanwhile, back in the barn, Ryan leaned his head on the black bars of the cage in order to study the lock on the door he moved around with his hands. He noticed the combination lock on the cage had a key slot on the back, but while he studied it, Ione got distracted by some mumbling.

The mumbling was actually Peter siting on the floor, reciting some words in Latin, saying, "Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus nostris, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta."

Ione looked over at her husband, and asked, "You're praying?"

Peter never took his eyes off the weapons the guards took away from them while he prayed, to which Ione told Ryan, "Really?! He's praying for Erebus to move!"

Peter overheard Ione's comments, and replied, "It ticks her off because she's seen me do it before."

"Oh, like one time! And, it only moved like half an inch! I wouldn't be surprised if it was a small earthquake that moved it!" Ione said to Ryan, explaining her side of story that went back years.

Peter looked up at Ryan, and said, "Ione Melder was once the most religious person I ever knew."

"Well, sorry to say this, but I think God and I have different priorities," Ryan replied before he noticed a bobby pin in Ione's hair.

"Can I borrow that?" He asked as he pointed to the pin.

"Sure," Ione replied before taking the pin out of her hair and handing it over to Ryan.

As Ryan began to attempt to pick the lock, Peter noticed Ryan getting nervous, and said, "Relax, Ryan, this isn't the first time I've been confined in an enclosed space.

"Good to know, but this is a first for me," Ryan replied, finding Peter's comment useless to the situation.

"You know, a wise man once told me that there is more than one sort of prison, Ryan. I sense that you carry yours wherever you go," Peter added.

His cellmate's comment riled Ryan on the inside; old wounds opened, letting out many emotions Ryan thought he had already dealt with. He shook his head to snap out of the state he was in and began to address the task at hand, picking the lock.


	12. Fake News

Meanwhile, at the end of the hallway Ralph pushed Rachel through stood a door that lead into Secretary Rogers' study. Once they reached the door Ralph cut off the zip tie around Rachel's wrist.

As Rachel gave her captor a dirty look, Ralph pointed at the door with barrel of his rifle, and commanded, "Get in there."

When Rachel just stood there, looking at the door, for less than two seconds, this irritated Ralph. He opened the door himself, pushed Rachel in, and before she could turn around he closed the door behind her. Rachel tried to open the door but Ralph was on the other side holding it shut. As she continued to attempt to open the door, Rachel overheard the voice of a woman call out to her.

"Rachel, is that you?" Secretary Rogers asked as she walked away from some documents and newspapers on her desk and approached her guest.

"Will, get up," Rogers told her seventy-one year old former-president-husband.

Rogers' voice calmed Rachel down and she gave up on opening the door, as Rogers asked, "So, you do exist?"

"Wow, I've never been a legend before," Rachel replied.

"Oh, it's just that I heard a lot about you, but I haven't received that much information about you."

"How much information on people do you collect?"

"Well, why don't you come and see? Come here."

On Rogers' desk lied several documents and copies of the national newspaper, _The Totally Not Failing Thump Times_ , all riddled with annotations.

Rogers got behind her desk and said, "These are my highlights."

"Highlights?" Rachel asked.

Rogers slid her copy of the newest edition of the satirical and pro-Resistance _Luan Out Loud_ comic strip to the side, grabbed a sample of her work, held it up, and explained, "You see, since I've been living under house arrest, I've been little help to those on the outside. But, I still have one thing that Thump can never take away from me, my talent with organizing and facts. You see, Thump ran media is full of lies, correct?"

"Definitely," Rachel replied.

"So, what I do is take every news story put out by the propaganda machine and fact-check it for the Resistance or whoever is out there that wants to know the truth. I take a story like the one I'm holding and rip the lies out of it, such as this one is titled 'Magnificent Businessman and President, Ronald Thump, Negotiates Fantastic Deal In China, We Won Bigly!' When you read the title, you think that Thump managed to make the best deal in history, but in reality he got scammed."

Rogers pulled a document from behind the newspaper, and said as she explained it, "Look, this secret document proves that what I said on the campaign trail was true; Thump is not the great businessman he says he is. He went to China asking for the equivalent of ten billion dollars and ended up leaving with only five billion, all in exchange for a promise to repay them in ten years at fifteen percent interest and an aircraft carrier."

"An aircraft carrier!" Rachel exclaimed.

"Oh, yes! One of the few pieces of military equipment the Chinese haven't yet stolen from us, just handed over by a man who's attention span is so short that he can be manipulated into doing anything just by constantly complementing him," Rogers explained.

As Rogers put down the sample, Rachel grabbed one of many copies of the newspaper, and asked, "So what's so special about this story? Why do you have so many copies of this story?"

When Rogers saw which newspaper Rachel held up, she sighed as she pulled out a folder full of evidence to disprove the contents of the article, and said, "Ah, yes, that's my most popular piece."

"'Southern California Twins Revealed Being Engaged In Forbidden Relationship Arrested,'" Rachel said as she turned the newspaper over to read the front page.

Rogers noticed Rachel looked surprised when she turned over the copy, leading her to ask, "Is there something wrong?"

"No, it's just that I remember this story, it was all over the news last September. And, to be honest, I met them once, they were friends of an ex of mine," Rachel replied.

"Ah, yes, they were real people, but they weren't the people in photograph or the people we saw being executed. Those were actors."

Rogers pulled out two pairs of documents, and said, "Look, I have birth certificates for the people accused of being in the relationship; Lillian Marie Jill DeVille and Phillip Richard Bill DeVille from San Bernardino County, dated March 31, 1990. Now look at these documents, death certificates of people with the exact same names, birthdate, and location of birth. It says here they died back in 2008, so how could they have been hiding this whole time? There's a nine year difference between the death date and the day the story broke! This story is so obviously fake, and that's just what the facts say! I mean, the entire premise is so ridiculous!"

As Rachel finished contemplating Rogers' explanation, she asked, "But why make up such a bogus story? Who would it benefit?"

Seeing that she had been given an opportunity to bring down Thump one more time, Rogers replied, "Ah, you see, praising Thump in the media can only do so much. Saying Thump is God can distract people from hate crimes, but it can't distract everyone from a failing economy, not even from Thump's own supporters. And, what do dictators do when there's a crisis, they move the attention from themselves over to a scapegoat. They were geniuses when they came up with this lie, riling everyone up over some people with, shall I say, 'peculiar' preferences that the public can all hate and fear. The only mistake they made was using people who actually existed, people my agents and I could track down."

Once Rogers finished her speech, Rachel tried to put the newspaper back on the table, but the Secretary stopped her, and said, "No, no, no, it's okay. Take it; remember what you have learned here today."

Rachel took the newspaper apart and put the first sheet of paper, the part that actually mattered, in her pocket for safe keeping, as she said, "Now that we crossed that bridge, I guess we should talk about the reason I was sent here."

"You do jump straight into things, don't you?" Rogers asked.

"You know, this meeting should have been quite simple. But, today, of all the days," Rogers told Rachel, stopping in the middle of a sentence.

After thinking about what she would say next, Rogers hesitantly asked, "It's a trap, isn't it?"

"What?" Rachel asked with a confused look on her face.

"The pilot, the message, all of it," Rogers responded, concerned that Megan was part of a sinister plot by Thump to silence her once and for all.

"Look, the Resistance wants my father; they told me he sent you a message about a weapons system. I guess they think if I came, you'd hand it over to me and I'd give it to them," Rachel said, trying to get Secretary Rogers to hand over her father's message.

Seeing that Rachel didn't state her true feeling, Rogers asked, "But, what do you want, Rachel?"

"I've gotten them what they wanted, an audience with you. I upheld my part of the deal, the rest of you can continue what you were doing."

"Then you don't care about the cause?"

"The cause, seriously? The Democrats, the Resistance, whatever you guys are calling yourselves these days, all any of this does is muddy the water," Rachel replied after she felt as the Secretary insulted her.

Secretary Rogers, in a calm matter, asked, "So, you can stand to see Nazi flags flying across the country?"

"It's not much of a problem if you don't look up," Rachel replied, without changing her dissatisfied facial expression.

As reasoning with her did not sway Rachel, Rogers stood silently for two seconds before she said, "I have something to show you, come."


	13. The Message

Thirty miles south from where Rachel was currently at, both Anthony and Reggie gathered key heads of the Thump administration at Thump Tower. Kabadaian had left for Washington DC a few hours ago, leaving the Megan Rimmer problem for these two ambitious military leaders to figure out. The gathering of Thump officials met in the office of Thump's oldest son and head of the Thump Organization while Thump was "busy" being president, Ronald Thump Jr. Other family members of the forty year old _American Psycho_ lookalike present in the room were the Beavis to his Butthead, his younger brother, Derek, his younger sister, the middle child of his father's first marriage, Thump's oldest daughter, and Special Advisor/Assistant to the President, Yana, and Yana's husband and Senior Advisor to the President, Cody Peltzer. The former governor of Texas and Secretary of Energy, Richard Johnson Harris, the seventy year old Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Sally Payson, the wife of the Senate Majority Leader before Kabadaian's Purge and Secretary of Transportation, Alayne Chia-Ling Kao, aging fraud child psychologist and Secretary of Health and Human Services, Werner Pankraz Lipschitz, Deputy Assistant to the President, Edgar Szarka, Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications, Lycan Antonis, the thirty-two year old yet decrepit-looking Senior Policy Advisor, Patrick Koerner, the forty-four year old Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison and former contestant of Thump's reality shows _The Protégé_ and _Celebrity Protégé_ , Omolara Mangold, and the Chief White House Counsel, Joel Hershowitz, were also in attendance.

With the group of advisors behind them in Ron Jr.'s dark office, Reggie turned over to Anthony, and whispered, "The cabinet and the National Advisory Council are awaiting my report."

"I would've thought that President Thump and Supreme Commander Kabadaian would have been here for such an occasion," Anthony replied, wishing that the two most powerful men in the nation could witness firsthand what he was about to do.

"And I thought it would be kind of me to spare you of possible embarrassment."

"Trust me, I don't need your pity."

"If saying it would only make it true!" Exclaimed Reggie, garnering the attention of everyone in the room.

Anthony turned around and faced everyone in the room as he pointed to a monitor with the UST flag as its screensaver, and said, "All of our forces within a ten mile radius of Chappaqua have been evacuated and I stand ready to give the orders for a bomber to take off and drop a B-83, destroying the hamlet and all of its inhabitants."

"A B-83?! That won't be a necessary, we're silencing a Libtard, not killing off her followers. A W-87 should get the job done."

"Get Station Six on the line. Tell them I want a W-87 strike on Chappaqua, New York," Anthony told Peltzer, one of Thump's most prominent advisors, who in reality held more power than several cabinet members, all thanks to his familial connection.

Back in the barn at the Rogers' home, Peter sat in the far left corner of the cage he and his partners were locked in, and asked, "Who's in the next cell?"

"What?" Ryan asked as he had been so preoccupied trying to pick the lock that he didn't notice the woman in a dark jumpsuit lying on the floor in fetal position.

When Ione realized what the woman's occupation was, she put her hands through the bars, and screamed, "It's a UST pilot! Don't worry, I'll kill it!"

"No, no! Wait, no! Back off, back off!" Ryan screamed as he pulled Ione away from the other cage.

Once Ryan realized this could be the pilot they were looking for, he asked, "Are you okay, are you the pilot?"

When the frightened woman, who was now curled up in a corner after Ione threatened her, didn't respond, Ryan asked again, "Hey, hey, are you the pilot, the cargo pilot?"

Megan didn't look up from the floor when she whispered, "Pilot?"

"What's wrong with her?" Peter asked, resulting in Ryan gesturing him to "calm down" by slowly lowering his open palm hand.

"Joshua Alcroft, does that name mean anything to you?" Ryan asked Megan.

Megan was finally able to calm down and snap out of the trance she fell in after spending so much time locked up in the cage, and responded, "I brought the message, I'm the pilot."

"I'm the pilot, I'm the pilot," she said with more and more confidence every sentence.

As Ryan smiled because Megan had more or less come to her senses, he asked her, "Okay good, now, where is Josh Alcroft?"

Meanwhile at Station Six, the base that now controlled all of the nukes in Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, outside of Aurora, Colorado, Post Commander Robert Spencer was in communication with Cody Peltzer in New York. Peltzer ordered Post Commander Spencer to launch a W-87 in order to wipe out the Rogers and everyone else in Chappaqua. Even though New York and the neighboring New England states had their own operational station, they lacked the ICBMs needed to get the nuclear warheads off the ground. Station Six was in the process of relocating several of their warheads to newly constructed underground missile silos of other stations until new Minuteman III's could be produced, but they still had a few stationed just in case the fateful day came when they would be needed.

"Lieutenant Collins, we're ready to begin..." Peltzer said before but off.

"Just fire the bitch!" Anthony replied, irritated by the amount of time he had to wait to prove how dedicated he was to the UST.

"Commence prepping the missile for the strike," Peltzer told Post Commander Spencer before the feed on the large monitor changed from the Post Commander's office to a live view of Chappaqua via a military satellite orbiting the planet.

Unaware of what was about to occur, Secretary Rogers sat at her desk as she plugged the flash drive Megan brought with her into her _Bell_ desktop computer. When the flash drive's dialog box appeared on the screen, displaying a list of different options, Secretary Rogers just sat there with her hand on the mouse. She kept moving her eyes around the screen for a few seconds before Rachel literally took matters into her own hands.

"There we go," Rachel said after grabbing the Secretary's hand and clicking on the option titled "Open folder to view files."

Once a window with the video file came on the screen the Secretary thanked Rachel, saying, "Thank you, I wasn't sure what to do next."

"I think most of the country would be surprised to hear that," Rachel responded, alluding to the bogus scandal the right whipped up to paint Rogers in a bad light after she used a private sever during her tenure as Secretary of State, a scandal that lead to an FBE investigation that only revealed she needed her aids to print various reports in a larger font for her to read.

Rogers brushed off Rachel's comment, as she knew what Rachel was referring to, clicked on the one file on the flash drive, and told Rachel, "This is the message I was sent."

Rachel, Will, and Wendy Rogers huddled around the monitor as the media player opened the file and the image of Josh in an engineering lab appeared, followed by Josh asking his Information Technologist, "Lynn, is it rolling?"

After Lynn assured him the camera was now recording, Josh took a deep breath, and said, "Greetings Secretary Rogers, you don't know me, but, like I assume you suspect, I definitely know you. I'm Joshua Alcroft and I come to you with this message in hopes that you will get it out to those who are fighting for a better world. I am trying to repent for all that I have done, and while I don't dare ask for too much, I ask you to please share this with my daughters, Rebecca, Rachel, and Lisa Alcroft. If you can possibly find them, if they're alive, to let them know my love for them has never faded, and how desperately I've missed all of them."

Rachel expected to hear her father's side of the story, but she never expected to hear a message personally directed at her and her sisters, in response she leaned in towards the screen, as Josh continued, "Rebecca, Rachel, Lisa, Shayna Punim; I can't imagine what you think of me. When the Deplorables came for me I had to face some bitter truths. As time went on I knew that you girls were either dead, or you managed to blend in so well that the Deplorables wouldn't bother to harass you. I knew if I refused to work, if I took my own life, it would only be a matter of time until the rest of my team finished the project. But once Lisa, a daughter of my IT guy and a member of my team, and her many, many siblings managed to escape the base, I knew it was time to do the one think no one would suspect of me. I lied, I learned to lie, I played the role of the beaten man resigned to the sanctuary of his work. I made myself indispensable, and all the while I began to implement the revenge plot my team and I had discussed in private for a long time. Lisa and I call it the 'Daughter of Sin,' she said that there is no better name for it, and it needs to be implemented soon in order to prevent the system from being unleashed. I've placed a weakness in the system, a flaw so small, yet powerful, that they should never find it."

"But, Rebecca, Rachel, Lisa, if any of you are listening, so much of my life has been wasted. I try thinking of you girls only in the moments when I'm strong, because the pain of not having you girls with me, your mother, our family, is so overwhelming that I risk failing even now. It's just so hard not to think about you. Think of where you are, Shayna Punim," Josh said as tears began to run down Rachel's face.

While Rachel and the Rogers watched Josh's message, two crewmen in orange overalls and red construction helmets at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana made the final preparations on the Minuteman III missile. The two crewmen, standing on their own single-person platform, walked back into the hallway that lead into the silos as the missile was ready to launch. They alerted their post commander that the missile was ready for launch, a message he relayed to Post Commander Spencer at Station Six. Once Post Commander Spencer gave the order to launch, the team at the controls used the system Josh and his team engineered to plug in the coordinates for the strike. Back at Thump Tower, everyone in Ron Jr.'s office huddled around the monitor that changed from an aerial view of Chappaqua to an empty field. All of a sudden, doors on the ground opened up and smoke began to rise. The doors were the missile silo hatches and the smoke came from the huge gust of fire that sent the missile flying out of the silo and straight up into space. Anthony crossed his arm, held his chin up high, and grinned as the Minuteman III got off the ground and the monitor changed from the launch site back to a view of Chappaqua.

As the missile headed in their direction, Rachel was completely broken down in tears, something that had not happened in years, as Josh continued, "So, the software, that's the key, that's the place I've laid my trap. I designed a flaw in the software that will shut the system down after the 'Daughter of Sin' virus is introduced. Yet, you'll need to get your hands on a copy I designed. I know there is a complete archive of my and other scientist's work in the data banks at the server farm in Mer-A-Lac. If you introduce the 'Daughter of Sin' virus into the system, all of the nuclear weapons in that system's dominion will become inactive."

As Rachel stood there completely frozen because of her dad's message, Will and Wendy's daughter, Regina Rogers, came in screaming, "Mom, dad, they've launched a nuke, and it's coming this way! We've got to evacuate immediately!"

The thirty-eight year old blonde rushed back to the living room where she alerted those who the group's intelligence gatherers had not yet told. Regina grabbed everything on the table she could as the armed men and women did the same thing, except instead of picking up their classified documents and laptops, they picked up firearms and explosives they hoped to use against the Deplorables as retaliation for their actions, especially the one they took that day. Will and Wendy turned their attention from the monitor and turned around to look out the window. There was nothing in the sky, but the two of them knew that was about to change.


	14. The Bomb

From a window near the barn door, Ryan could see people running out of the house in panic. Since they were running in the opposite direction of the barn, Ryan realized that it was the perfect time to escape. He broke the point of the bobby pin by pushing the end on the floor and breaking the point off. He then stuck the broken pin down the inner side of the hole where the shackle locks and unlocked it.

Once Ryan pushed open the door, he screamed, "Go, go!"

The three of them ran out of the cage, and then Ryan rushed over to where the Evzones laid down their stuff, pulled out his walkie talkie, and asked frantically, "Sabu, Sabu, where are you?!"

"There you are, I was starting to get worried. I'm standing by as you requested, but there seems to be a problem, a lot of people are running away from the area," Sabu replied, informing Ryan of what he had seen from the cockpit and overheard on transmissions he had intercepted.

"Get the plane ready for takeoff, we'll be there soon," Ryan replied as he began to leave the barn.

Peter saw Ryan rushing around in a hurry, and asked, "Where are you going, are we leaving now?"

Ryan turned around after walking down the door, and replied, "I've got to find Rachel, free the pilot, we need her."

"Alright, I'll _free_ that pilot," Ione replied, emphasizing the word "free," as she grabbed her gun from the pile of their confiscated items.

When Ryan overheard how Ione said what she said, he ran back to the barn, and said, "What, no! Peter, you free her!"

"Okay," Peter replied as Ryan went off to find Rachel.

Ione pulled Erebus out of Peter's backpack and threw it too him. While most people would move to the side at the sight of a sword flying towards them, Peter stood still, held his hand out, and grabbed Erebus from its hilt. He spun it around a few times once he held his sword again, letting its energy rush through and reinvigorate him. Megan turned around to face the Albanys when Ione called her "Pilot," and saw Peter getting ready to strike with his sword. As Peter began to run towards the cage while he moved Erebus from above his shoulders to in front of his chest, Megan ducked at the far end of the cage because she though Peter was going to kill her.

"Oh, no, no, no," Megan cried as Peter broke the lock on the cage with Erebus.

"Let's go!" Ione said as Megan realized that Peter wasn't trying to kill her.

As the Albanys liberated Megan from her cage, Ryan ran through the empty Rogers home, screaming, "Rachel, Rachel!"

He stopped for a moment when he saw a pair of car keys lying on the counter, seeing that they could use the car to get to the plane faster, he grabbed them as he continued screaming, "Rachel, where are you?!"

Ryan then proceeded to run down the same hallway Ralph escorted Rachel just a few minutes ago. He began to open every door in that hallway until he made his way to Secretary Rogers' study. When he opened the door and saw people inside he pulled out his gun and held it close to his body. President Rogers noticed the armed man enter his wife's study, so he immediately pulled out his own weapon and aimed it at Ryan. Once Ryan noticed that Rachel was in the room, along with the Rogers, he signaled to President Rogers that he meant them no harm and slowly put his gun back in his holster.

Ryan slowly approached Secretary Rogers' desk as he asked, "What's going on?"

"There's a nuclear bomb coming this way," President Rogers replied.

After hearing the words "nuclear bomb," Ryan's face became as dead as Rachel's after watching her father's message, leading him to freeze for a moment and then walk up to Rachel, and say, "Rachel, we've got to go."

Once Rachel snapped out of the trance she was in, Ryan replied, "I know where your father is."

Rachel barely moved as she tried to contemplate what Ryan said in the silent room, but Secretary Rogers interjected, and commanded, "Go with him, Rachel. You must go."

Ryan had walked behind Rogers' desk and had begun to pull Rachel out of the room before she turned back, grabbed the Secretary's wrist, and said, "Come with us."

Secretary Rogers pulled Rachel's hand of her wrist, and replied, "It's us they want. If we leave, even more will suffer the same fate."

"Come on," Ryan commanded as he pulled on Rachel's arm.

However, Rachel did not let go of the Secretary's arm, prompting Rogers' to respond, "You must save yourself."

"Come on," Ryan said as he pulled even harder.

"Go!" Secretary Rogers commanded as she released Rachel's grasp from her wrist.

Once Rachel was free, Ryan put his hand on her back and pushed her out of Secretary Rogers' study, screaming, "There's no time!"

As Rachel and Ryan made their way out of her study, Secretary Rogers cried out one final message for them, "Save Democracy, save the American Dream!"

The street in front of the Rogers' home was a mess; all of the Evzones began to load all of their supplies into vehicles they had hidden under tarps and in neighbors' garages. Regina Rogers got in a packed car with Ralph and left her parent's home immediately after, convinced that her parents would get out as well. As the last of the Evzones loaded whatever remained, Peter, Ione, and Megan just stood idly by, watching the men and women running around frantically. When Ryan and Rachel ran out the front door, Ryan held the car remote up in the air and pressed the panic button, resulting in a car alarm going off. Ryan screamed at Peter, Ione, and Megan to follow him and Rachel as they were going to go find where the car alarm was coming from.

It was a bit difficult to hear the car alarm because of the commotion the Evzones made, but once the last Evzone evacuated the area it was clear that the alarm was coming from the left side of the home. The group ran to the left and found a black SUV with its alarm going off. Ryan turned off the alarm, unlocked the SUV, and got in the driver's seat. Rachel sat in the passenger seat while Peter, Ione, and Megan sat in the second row. Once the SUV started, Ryan hit the pedal and began to drive back to the plane. As the group made their way off the Rogers' property and down Old House Lane, President and Secretary Rogers walked out of their home and watched them speed off.

It took Ryan ten minutes to get from the Rogers' home to the field where the plane was. Since the town was void of Deplorables, or any other security group, there was no one to enforce the laws, so Ryan took the opportunity to drive way passed the speed limit and even drive off road. Once they arrived at their location, they found that Sabu had prepared the plane for takeoff as Ryan had requested and was ready to leave immediately.

When Ryan stopped the SUV and everyone got out of the vehicle, Ione ran towards the plane, and screamed, "Peter, let's go!"

Peter was already running towards the plane while Ryan screamed at Megan while she stood next to the SUV, "Come on, let's get out of here!"

"Get us out of here, punch it!" Ryan commanded Sabu once everyone else entered the plane.

Rachel closed the door of the plane from the inside and looked out the window, as Sabu replied, "I'm not very optimistic about our odds."

"Not now, Sabu!" Ryan barked back at Sabu once he got into the co-pilot's seat as the plane was slowly gaining speed for takeoff.

Frustrated at how slow the plane was going, Ryan pushed the thrust lever into full thrust in order to make it out of the area as possible. The plane was shaking terribly as it was skating across the uneven ground, very different from the paved runways it usually took off from. Back at the Rogers home, President and Secretary Rogers stood outside their home and watched as a cone shaped object got larger and larger as it fell from the sky. After staring at the cone for a few seconds, the two closed their eyes, bowed their heads, and clasped their hands together in order to recite one final prayer.

Praying was the last thing the Rogers could do since they did not leave Chappaqua when their daughter, the Evzones, and Rachel and her group did. Secretary Rogers knew that she had to stay behind as her time had come and gone. Younger and working people had fallen for the lies that she was corrupt and did not truly represent them, and it was that divide that distanced her from the Resistance. Even if she did leave Chappaqua, she knew that there would be more strikes in more places, all of them aimed at eliminating her. She knew that she couldn't persuade everyone in the Resistance and the other anti-Thump groups that didn't trust her to see that she was on their side by giving a speech or by giving all of her secret intelligence to them. In the age of Thump, emotion was king. It didn't matter if you had the best plan, if you couldn't speak with passion, you were ignored. The only way she could redeem herself in their eyes was by giving up her life in order to save many more.

Back on the plane, Ryan became very anxious as Sabu had not yet gotten the plane of the ground, screaming as he hit his aircraft control yoke, "Come on!"

Rachel looked out the window of the plane and saw the nuclear warhead getting closer and closer to its destination, as Ryan screamed, "Get us off the ground, now!"

"It's not safe to take off yet, we're going too fast. I have to do this very delicately," Sabu replied as he began to gently bring the plane up.

"Not safe, my ass. Let go of the wheel," Ryan said as he pushed Sabu away from the controls with his left arm, and proceeded to bring the control yoke closer to his chest, thus finally getting the plane off the ground.

Now that they were in the air, Ryan made the plane take a right turn, placing the plane on a westbound course, getting them farther away from Chappaqua. As they flew over the Tappan Zee region of the Hudson River they thought they were in the clear, until they heard the most violent explosion they had ever heard. The nuclear bomb had finally made its way to Chappaqua, detonating over Saw Mill River Parkway, a road around three thousand feet northwest of the Rogers' home. This particular target was selected in order to prove just how cruel the UST could be. The radius of the initial fireball created by a W-87 thermonuclear warhead would have been strong enough to incinerate anything and anyone in its vicinity without causing pain. This particular target was selected because it put the Rogers' home outside the vicinity. During the last fraction of a second of their lives, the Rogers experienced unbelievable pain as the fireball expanded, turning them and everything around them into ash as they prayed.

The air blast destroyed all of the buildings in northern Chappaqua and flattened or severely damaged the infrastructure of the rest of Chappaqua and the other towns, villages, and hamlets in the area. One such place unknowingly affected by the blast was one of Thump's own golf courses, the Thump National Golf Club Westchester; it was damaged by the air blast and was covered in radioactive debris from the fallout. The air blast spread out so much that it shook the plane, nearly bringing it and the passengers inside down. Ryan and Sabu feared that they would have to "pull a Sully Sullenberger" and land the plane in the Hudson River below them, but fortunately, the air blast seven miles out wasn't as strong as it was at ground zero. Thus, they were able to stabilize the plane and continue to evacuate the area.


	15. The Fallout

Back at Ron Jr.'s office in Thump Tower, Anthony stood watching the monitor displaying live images of a destroyed Chappaqua with his arms crossed and tears of joy beginning to form underneath his eyes, as he commented, "The end of the Crooked Rogers' political dynasty. It's so..."

"Beautiful," Said Reggie, beating Anthony to saying the word.

Seeing that his competitor beat him to finish his own sentence, Anthony decided to leave the room. He could no longer enjoy the sadistic satisfaction of having eliminated the Rogers, something that conservatives of all strides could have only dreamt of before. He wiped his eyes with his fingers, drying them up, and proceeded to turn around and exit Ron Jr.'s office. Everyone in the office was talking to each other about what was happening; Lycan Antonis, Edgar Szarka, and Patrick Koerner all made it known how joyful they were to have wiped the Rogers of the face of the Earth, Lipschitz did what he did in his many parenting books and made up a psychological explanation for why the alt-right advisors were so gleeful, the Thump brothers laughed at the people who lost their lives in the bombing, and Yana and Peltzer discussed who would tell Thump about what happened.

As Anthony passed his friend with his right hand on his chin and his left hand holding onto his right elbow, contemplating the next step he would take to ensure he would become the next Attorney General, Reggie said, "I believe I owe you an apology, Lieutenant Collins."

Once Reggie got the attention of everyone in the dark room, he turned around to face Anthony, and continued, "You're work exceeded all of my expectations."

The people in the room all broke up into two groups, the Thump siblings, Peltzer, Hershowitz, and Mangold stood to the left, while Harris, Payson, Kao, Lipschitz, Szarka, Antonis, and Koerner stood to the right, creating a walkway in between Reggie and the doorway where Anthony turned around, and asked, "And you'll make sure the cabinet and the National Advisory Council hears about this in your report?"

"I will tell them that what has transpired today has silenced the Rogers for all eternity and marks the beginning of the end of the leftist terrorists who wish to annihilate us," Reggie told Anthony while looking at everyone standing around his friend.

"And that this was just a small amount of how far I am willing to go in order to defend this new world," Anthony added, making sure to emphasize that he would do anything for the UST.

"Mr. Peltzer, let it be known in your next meeting with the President that the nuclear weapon I, Major Reginald Greenfield, recommended has eliminated William and Wendy Rogers. They have now paid the price for the crime of rigging the popular vote against the President," Reggie said with a smirk on his face.

The smile on Anthony's face quickly turned to a resentful expression when he heard Reggie's words. He had finally realized what he was doing; Reggie was using Peltzer to get to Thump while he was going through the cabinet and the National Advisory Council. Anthony was making sure he had the backing of the real leadership of the UST while Reggie pursued the support of the puppet the public saw as the man in power. Anthony knew if he wanted anything he would have to go through the cabinet or the NAC, but he never foresaw an outcome where the true leadership supported him and Thump supported someone else, like Reggie. Such a rift would weaken the UST and give the many insurgents organizing around the country the upper hand. Even worse, the Deplorable Corp would split between the higher officers who would support whoever the cabinet and NAC supported and the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who would support whoever Thump supported in such an event.

Unable to let Reggie get away with his plan, Anthony chuckled as his competition, stared him down before he stormed down the isle of top figures, and screamed as he pointed towards his own chest before pointing at Reggie's chest, "We stand here amidst my achievement, not yours!"

Reggie managed to keep his cool as Anthony got up in his face, calmly replying, "I'm afraid the recent security breach and the need to take the action you have just taken proves that you aren't suited for the position of Attorney General."

"I've just sealed the leaks, Chappaqua has been silenced," Anthony replied, focusing on his actions instead of distancing himself from Megan Rimmer's defection, the opposite of what Reggie hoped he would do when he accused Anthony of being responsible for the cargo pilot's decision to betray the UST.

As everyone else in the room got closer to listen into the argument between the two officers, Reggie reminded Anthony, "You think this pilot acted alone? She was dispatched from the installation in Royal Woods, Joshua Alcroft's facility."

Realizing that the conspiracy could possibly go even deeper that a pilot blabbing to the Rogers, the serious expression of Anthony's face turned into a surprised one.

"I'll get to the bottom of this," Anthony assured Reggie before turning around and exiting Ron Jr.'s office.

Reggie kept staring at Anthony, harboring a look of disdain on his face, as he walked out of the dark office. Meanwhile, back at the Resistance's LA branch, Buffy Summers, a blonde intelligence gatherer seated at one of the desks that surrounded the outer areas of the room where Rachel had been interrogated hours ago, sat in her chair as she decrypted a message sent by Ryan. It was at this moment that her friend Alex walked in alongside her fellow Beverly Hills native and another good friend, Samantha Hale. Samantha had red hair and light skin and served as a liaison between the lower level members of the cyber-warfare department and Alex, thus enabling her friend's actions that undermined the Resistance's goals.

"An encrypted message from Captain Rodriguez, Alex," Samantha said.

Buffy read the message from Ryan she had decrypted on her desktop monitor, saying, "Rumor confirmed, Chappaqua destroyed. Mission target located in Royal Woods, Michigan, please advise."

"Destroyed?" Alex replied in utter shock, to which Buffy replied with a nod.

After thinking it over for a few seconds and taking a deep breath, Alex told Buffy to respond, "'Proceed.' Tell him 'my orders still stand.' Tell him to 'proceed with haste and keep to the plan.'"

Buffy nodded in the middle of Alex's response and began to write the message down in order to begin encrypting it as Alex and Samantha walked away, and Alex told her fellow financier of the Resistance, "We have no idea what he's building for Thump, we have to kill Joshua Alcroft while we have the chance."


	16. Secret Flaw

Immediately after Buffy sent the message, Ryan received it on a laptop he kept in the back of the plane, and immediately began decrypting it. The plane had just crossed over into Pennsylvania, one of the three states that flipped and put Thump in the White House, a few minutes ago, meaning they had to be extra careful as Thump's ego let him to emphasize on securing the places that voted for him. It took Ryan a few second to run the encrypted message through the decoding software that Zack Wehrenberg created for the Resistance in order to reveal a message that said Alex ordered him to continue the mission she had laid out.

As everyone quietly sat in the plane after witnessing such destruction, Peter broke the silence when he asked, "Ione, tell me, all of it, the entire place?"

Ione sat silently, still trying to process what she had seen at night, when Peter demanded, "Tell me."

"All of it," Ione coldly replied, informing her husband on what had occurred since she had a better view of the devastation from her seat than he did.

Ione then turned to give a dirty look at Megan, blaming her as a member of the UST military for the attack, as Ryan said the word he encrypted and sent in response to the message, "Understood."

Awhile after the message was sent, Ryan got up and said, "Sabu, set course for Royal Woods, Michigan."

"Setting course for Royal Woods, Michigan," Sabu replied as he began to steer the plane to the right and pulled out a booklet to make sure he was going in the exact direction.

Ryan was about to begin writing a message to the Resistance's Detroit branch to let them know they were going to need to refuel after their "mission," before Rachel turned around and asked, "Is that where my father is?"

Ryan stood still, not sure if he wanted to tell her because of the nature of his true assignment, before he decided to reply, "I think so."

Megan, who was sitting right across from Rachel, asked her, "So, you're Josh's daughter?"

Rachel's eyes opened up with excitement when she heard Megan's question, leading her to ask, "You know him?"

"Uh, I'm Megan, the pilot."

"You're the one who brought the message!"

"Yes, your father, he said I could right my wrongs. He said I could make things right, if I was brave enough, and listen to what was in my heart. Do something about it, but I guess it was too late."

Ryan looked over in curiosity after hearing Megan's kind words about Josh as Rachel began shaking her head as she held back even more tears, and said, "It's not too late"

"Tell that to the citizens of Chappaqua," Ione replied without even moving her eyes off the ground.

Rachel shook her head before she said, "No, we can get back at the people who did this. My father's message, I've seen it. The system, they have no idea there's a way to defeat it, my father calls it the 'Daughter of Sin.'"

She saw Ryan walking over to her, thus Rachel got out of her chair, and said straight to Ryan's face, "You're wrong about my father."

Ryan didn't back down when Rachel approached him, replying, "He did make it."

Rachel didn't take her eyes of Ryan when he talked back to her, she continued, "Because he knew they'd do it without him. My father made a choice, he sacrificed himself for the Resistance. He's created a virus to shut it down. That's why he sent Megan, to deliver the message."

Seeing that convincing Rachel to accept Alex's view of events was a fool's errand, Ryan calmed down, and asked, "Where is it?"

As Rachel stood there in silence, confused about what Ryan was referring too, he reiterated, "Where's the message?!"

It was at that moment that Rachel realized she had made a huge mistake, all she could do was say, "It was a recording on a flash drive."

Ryan began to worry when he saw the shocked look on Rachel's face, leading him to ask, "You have that message, right?"

All Rachel could do at this point was lower her head down in shame, and say, "No, everything happened so fast."

Hoping that Megan saw the message, he turned to her, and asked, "Did you see it?"

"No," Megan replied, lowering her head down as well.

Even though Rachel was telling the truth, she thought that nobody believed her, so she asked Ryan, "You don't believe me?"

Ryan looked her straight in the eye, and told her the cold, hard truth, "I'm not the one you have to convince."

"I believe her," Peter blurred out, catching everyone's attention.

"That's good to know," Ryan replied, adding another one of Peter's comments to his list of pointless statements the swordsman had said in the last few hours.

Feeling that her husband was being belittled, Ione jumped into the conversation, and asked, "A virus, you said your father created a virus?"

Rachel looked over at Ione and recapitulated what she learned from Josh's message, saying, "Yeah, the 'Daughter of Sin.' He and another one of his coworkers had the idea for months. He designed a weakness in the software so that when you put the virus in the system all of the nukes shut down."

Now that she had the chance to contemplate on the seriousness of her father's work, Rachel told Ryan, "We need to alert the Resistance."

"I've already done that," Ryan replied.

"They have to know there's a way to shut the nukes down. They have to go to Mer-A-Lac and get the hard drive with all of the information about the system," Rachel explained.

"I can't risk sending that message now, we're in the heart of Thump Country," Ryan replied.

Seeing that she would not be able to persuade Ryan the way he tried to do to her, Rachel responded, "Then we'll find him, bring him back, and he can tell them himself."

Everyone in the plane stood silent, not sure if such a thing was even possible. Ryan just stood there for a while and then slightly nodded his head before heading back to write his message to the Detroit base to let them know they're going to need to refuel. Meanwhile, two hours later back in New York, Anthony had just managed to reserve a government jet to make a trip of his own. He boarded a C-20 Gulfstream IV on the runway of the former John F. Kennedy International Airport and took his seat a few rows in front of his squad of Deplorable bodyguards. As the plane began to prepare for takeoff Anthony looked back as his dramatic standoff and departure of Thump Tower, but after waiting until one in the morning to finally get a plane, he knew he had to "get to the bottom of this," as he had promised. Once he solved the mystery of who created the message that Megan delivered, and disposed of them, he knew that he would be awarded with the Attorney General position. No longer would he have to wait for hours to get a plane, as second in line for the presidency he would be able to get a plane just by walking onto the base.

However, all of this depended on Reggie not interfering anymore, and knowing Reggie, Anthony knew that was very unlikely. He even began to grind his molars at the thought of Reggie sliding in at the last second and taking the credit for solving the mystery, like he did for the strike on Chappaqua. In order to calm himself down, Anthony pulled out his phone and pulled up a photo his Aunt Charlotte had taken of him and Angelica twelve years ago. It was at Angelica's High School graduation, and the two cousins looked like Thump when he met Pope Francis. Anthony stood up straight in his suit and tie with a smug look on his face while Angelica slouched in her white graduation gown with a look on her face that said she wanted to get this photo op done with already. The photograph always calmed him down, until he noticed the expression on Angelica's face. Anthony began to grind his teeth again, unable to get the image of his cousin's sulking face out of his mind until he heard a small cracking noise. He raised his right hand to his right cheek and began to feel a slight pain in his gums.

Anthony thought he had chipped one of his molars, but before he could spit out whatever he broke off, the pilot came over the intercom, and said, "Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, we have now reached our cruising altitude and are en route for Royal Woods, Michigan."

Anthony lifted his head up when the pilot delivered his message. He was a bit surprised that he did not feel the plane take off while he looked at the picture, but he shrugged it off, shut off his phone, and took the time to contemplate what he would do when he arrived in Michigan.


	17. The Loud Crash

It was now passed two in the morning and the crew had finally made it to Royal Woods, Michigan. They were able to save time by flying over Southwestern Ontario, something they could do as they weren't UST planes. The danger of crossing into Canadian airspace wasn't getting caught by the Canadians as they were one of the many countries that were helping the Resistance, but getting caught by the UST. If you were caught trying to leave the country, you would be considered a defector and a traitor, meaning you would be executed immediately. The only thing Sabu and Ryan had to do was send a secret message to _Transport Canada_ , the government department responsible for the nation's transportation matters, to let them know that a Resistance plane was going to cross into their airspace.

As the plane shook due to the rain and wind, Peter closed the eyes of his bowed head, and began reciting the same prayer from when he, Ione, and Ryan were locked in the cage, "Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus nostris, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta."

In the cockpit, Ryan looked over at Sabu, and said, "We've got to pick altitude. We're flying really low."

"No, no, no, lower!" Megan exclaimed.

Since all he could see during the short snippets of time that the rain wasn't blocking the cockpit window was the roofs of homes, Sabu asked, "Are you sure we can't go any higher? We're getting too close to the houses."

"Yes, they have flight trackers and patrol squadrons, you have to keep it low," Megan reassured Sabu.

As the rain blocked the view from the cockpit, Ryan said, "God, I can't see anything!"

To make matters even worse, Ryan noticed that the plane was about to crash into a home, causing him to exclaim, "Oh crap, turn right!"

As Sabu turned the plane to the right, Ryan pulled out his phone to see where they were, and said, "Okay, my phone says we're over 1252 Franklin Avenue, how much farther?"

Megan turned to him, and said, "I don't know, I'm not sure, I've never come this way before, but we're close. Where are we now?"

"1238 Franklin Avenue," Ryan replied.

Since the windshield wipers were at full speed, Megan could only see a bright light in the distance for a second before she exclaimed, "That's it, that's Station Four! Land the plane now!"

"Are you crazy, we're in a residential area. And even if we weren't, I couldn't just land in these conditions," Sabu responded.

Megan snapped at Sabu's cautiousness, and said, "Well, if you don't at least turn around you're going to pass right over the hangars. Where are we now, Ryan?"

"1224 Franklin Avenue," Ryan replied.

Because of the low visibility created by the rain, Sabu and Ryan could not always see if they were flying too low. Unfortunately, this lead to the pilot and co-pilot not noticing that they were flying so low that they were about to hit the roof of a home.

When Ryan noticed through the rain that they were about to crash into a home, he restrained himself, and screamed, "Oh, fuck! Hold on!"

Sabu and Ryan panicked as they saw the plane getting closer and closer to the roof of 1220 Franklin Avenue. In an attempt to avoid a collision, Sabu and Ryan turned the yoke to the left, but unfortunately it was too late. The plane crashed into the chimney and room of 1220 Franklin Avenue and a tree in the backyard of that property. The plane still had speed it had built up during the flight, and that speed sent the plane through the chimney and roof of the neighboring home, 1218 Franklin Avenue. As the plane crashed through and destroyed the homes in its way, the speed of the plane began to decrees. The plane made a complete stop after crashing into the detached garage and a tree in the backyard of 1216 Franklin Avenue.

The plane crash shook everyone in the plane and left them really woozy. Ryan was able to gain the strength needed to get out of his seat, get a flashlight from the back of the plane, and went outside to examine the damage from the outside. He opened the door of the plane and immediately got hit with the pouring rain that lead to Sabu and him crashing in the first place. Ryan stood as far as possible and pointed the light to examine the damage the crash had created. The roofs of the two houses down and the detached garage were completely destroyed, along with two trees, and the back wall of 1216 Franklin Avenue. Not to mention the ends of the wings, the underside, and the landing gear of the plane were torn off during the belly landing in the suburban neighborhood.

"Thank God for Newton's First Law of Motion," Ryan said to himself, referencing to the role of friction in the physical law that states "an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."

Meanwhile at the Resistance's LA branch, Buffy Summers messed around with the communication software on her computer in an attempt to communicate with Rachel's crew, as Alex said, "Try contacting them again."

Frustrated with her friend's request, Buffy responded, "I'm trying to, Alex. The signal's gone dead."

Believing that the plane had crashed and that everyone on board died at the point of impact, or at least were unable to continue the mission, Alex turned her attention to a webcam mounted on the desk, and told an old confrère of hers and of the Resistance's LA branch who was now working at the Detroit branch, "Master Sergeant Santiago. Wheel's up, target Station Four."

Back in Royal Woods, Ryan returned to the plane, this time carrying jackets and a pair of wire cutters he took from 1216 Franklin Avenue. While Ryan was scavenging the home they crashed next to for supplies, Sabu and Megan used their combined knowledge to fix the Wi-Fi Hotspot that allowed them to communicate with the Resistance.

"Reboot it now, see if it works," Megan told Sabu as Ryan reentered the plane.

As he approached Megan, Ryan asked, "Megan, where's the base?"

"Station Four?" Megan asked.

"Yeah, where is it?"

"It's just up the street, and a few more turns."

"And there's a hangar there? Are you sure?!"

"Yes!"

"Well, let's hope there's a plane we can take once we're done here."

As Ryan began to put on one of the dark jackets he took from 1216 Franklin Avenue so that he would stay hidden in the dark streets, he began explaining his plan, saying, "This is what we're doing, hopefully the storm keeps up and keeps us hidden."

Ryan tossed the other dark jacket he took from the house on Megan's lap, and said, "Megan, you're coming with me. You'll take me to the base so I can check it out."

Right when Ryan went to the back of the plane to pick up an AS50 sniper rifle, Rachel added, "I'm coming with you guys."

"No, your father's message. You're the messenger, we can't risk losing you," Ryan snapped back as he attached the scope to the rifle.

"But I told everybody what the message said, everybody here knows it," Rachel replied.

As Ryan gave Rachel a dirty look, Sabu stated what his partner was thinking, repeating Rachel's words, "'When you put the virus in the system all of the nukes shut down.' That's what you said, 'all of the nukes shut down.'"

"Get back to work fixing that Hotspot!" Ryan angrily screamed at Sabu to stop antagonizing Rachel as he did not want this ignite a huge fight in the group.

Ryan put the rifle in his backpack before approaching Rachel, and telling her and everybody else, "All I want to do right now is get a handle on what we're up against. So Megan and I are going to up there very carefully and see what's going on here."

"Come on Megan, let's go," Ryan said as he put his backpack on and guided Megan out of the plane.

As the two exited the plane, Peter sat in his seat observing the two. He thought something felt odd about Ryan when he was explaining his plan, almost as if he was covering something up. Meanwhile, Ryan turned on his flashlight to guide Megan and him to the street. They walked to the right and went around one of the undamaged sides of 1216 Franklin Avenue, passing the home and a tree with a tire swing in the front yard before finding their way to the sidewalk. Once they had made it to the sidewalk, Megan took over being the leader and began guiding Ryan to Station Four.


	18. In The Mystery House

Rachel looked out the window as the rain kept coming down onto the plane and thought about why Ryan was so reluctant to let her go with him and Megan, while Peter turned around and asked Ione, "Do you think he's a killer?"

"No, I don't think so, he seems like a trustworthy person," Ione responded, aware of what Peter was referring too.

These comments caught Rachel's attention, leading her to approach Peter, and asking him, "Wait, who are you talking about?"

"Captain Rodriguez," Ione interjected, answering for Peter by using Ryan's rank in the Resistance.

"Why were you asking that stuff before? Why did you ask Ione if she thinks he's a killer?" Rachel asked Peter.

Holding onto Erebus's hilt, Peter took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a while before opening his eyes as if he had just seen into the future, and responded, "It's just that it feels as if he is about to kill someone."

Getting no useful information out of Peter's obvious response, Rachel was both glad and angry when Sabu added, "His firearm was equipped with a sniper."

Meanwhile, near the perimeter of Station Four, Megan guided Ryan to an area with very little security. The rain kept pouring down on them and eventually got into their shoes, damping their socks. Luckily, their upper bodies were protected from the rain by the jackets Ryan took from 1216 Franklin Avenue. They had reached a section of the wire fence that was not in the immediate view of the guards stationed at the various guard towers, but was still in view of the various security cameras mounted all around. Ryan thought they had found the perfect spot to break in through, but when Megan saw him pull out the wire cutters he took from the home, she stopped him.

"No, no, no, there's a less secure spot over here," Megan said, pointing to the right.

Ryan agreed to listen to Megan's advice as she had worked on the base before and knew where all of the surveillance weak spots were. The two continued to walk parallel to the fence in order to get to the prime location of weakness; while back on the plane, Rachel opened the door of the plane and ran out, leaving Sabu, Peter, and Ione back on board. As the rain kept coming down hard, Rachel rushed towards and up the damaged staircase that lead to the backdoor of the house, and took refuge inside very easily as the door was both damaged during the crash and knocked down by Ryan when he raided the house for supplies. While Rachel entered 1216 Franklin Avenue, Sabu and Ione worked on fixing the Hotspot, and Peter sat in his seat, holding onto Erebus, sensing what Rachel was up to.

Once inside the house, Rachel realized that she was in the kitchen, and was taken aback by the smell of rotting food mainly coming from the refrigerator to the left of her. The rest of the smell came from rotting fruit on the counter and unwashed plates still on the table in the dining room in the adjacent room. She turned to the left and then to the right and proceeded to walk straight out of the kitchen and into a dining room that appeared to have been untouched for some time. Mold grew on half-eaten slices of toast, in the milk in bowls of cereals, and every other bit of uneaten food.

After Rachel turned to the right, she found herself walking towards the living room, but stopped in her tracks when she felt she had stepped on something. She backed up, reached down, and picked up a beige-furred stuffed rabbit doll wearing a purple polo shirt lying in the area between the staircase leading to the second floor and the front door. When Rachel moved closer to the window so that the bit of light coming from outside could illuminate the doll to get a better look at it she noticed that a trail of dried blood lead from the front door all the way to the coffee table in the center of the living room.

With all of the signs pointing to something horrible happening in this house, Rachel was curious as to whom the residents of 1216 Franklin Avenue were. Luckily, she found some answers when she looked above the chimney mantle to the left of the blood-stained coffee table. Above the mantle stood a portrait in a golden frame of eleven children of all ages along with their four pets. Most of them appeared to be girls; while the only boy Rachel could identify stood right in the middle, wearing an orange polo shirt, a pair of jeans, and a chunk of mud on the right side of his face. While being hit in the face with mud might have caused the boy to let out a loud scream at the time the portrait was taken, it might also be a response to the rest of the imperfections occurring at the same time. Imperfections like an older sister wearing Groucho Marx Glasses, another one playing an electric guitar, one jumping up in the air behind him to catch a football, and two others were on their phones, while a pair of younger sisters rolled up in a ball fought each other, another pair put all of their attention into reading the words on the pages of a book and a clipboard respectably, all the while a baby walked around naked, the dog chased the cat, a hamster rolled around in his ball, and a bird hovered over the family.

It looked like the family that once resided in the house had left halfway through their breakfast, but they probably didn't leave on their own accord. Rachel guessed that most likely the Deplorables had arrived at some point in the past and forcefully evicted the family from their own home. They most likely caused the trail of blood in the living room by beating or shooting one of the family members who stood up for their rights. And as for the stuffed rabbit that she stepped on, she reasoned that one of the children must have dropped it when they were being dragged out of their home. Rachel noticed that both the stuffed rabbit and the boy wore polo shirts and thought that he might be the owner, but after thinking it over she concluded that no "normal" boy his age would still carry around a stuffed animal.

The thought of an entire family being dragged out of their home by an army of thugs, and most likely assaulted during the whole thing, was enough to form tears in Rachel's eyes. This was the third time in the last twenty-four hours that she had felt any powerful emotion after living a pessimistic life for the last decade and a half. With the thought of Deplorables hurting this family, she remembered that Ryan and Megan, not to mention her father, were at a great risk of receiving the same treatment. Remembering that she had left the plane to find her father, she backed away from the living room and ran up the stairs in order to find a jacket to use like Ryan did.

When Rachel reached the second floor she noticed that there was an open door to a room right in front of her. She decided that it was a good place to start looking for a jacket to wear, but unfortunately the half-goth half-athletic themed room belonged to some of the smaller kids as none of the jackets fit Rachel. She then went back to the doorway and crossed over to the room on the left. Unfortunately, it too was a room for the younger children as half of the room was covered in princess décor and had a play kitchen with a tea set and table. But, surprising to Rachel the other half of the room was rather unkempt, the complete opposite of the princess side. However, when she looked down, Rachel noticed an open toolbox lying on the floor. She remembered that Ryan had a pair of wire cutters with him when he left with Megan; so just in case she needed them, Rachel pulled out a pair of wire cutters from the tool box and put it in her right pocket, next to the debunked newspaper article about the DeVilles Secretary Rogers gave her back in Chappaqua.

When she returned to the doorway, she noticed that the door to the room on the right on the other side of the hallway was open. She crossed the hallway and guessed that this room belonged to some of the older sisters. Once she opened the door to the closet on the far left corner, she pulled out a light blue coat with a thin ring of white faux fur around the arm cuffs, collar, and bottom of the coat. Rachel tried it on and this time it did fit, along with a green beanie with a lighter green colored small puff ball and cuff that appeared to belong to the other occupant of the room as it was located the other side of the closet.

Now that she had found a coat that would suffice, she zipped up the zipper and returned downstairs. However, before she opened the front door, she realized that she was still holding onto the stuffed rabbit doll. In hopes that the family would one day return to their home, she left the stuffed rabbit on the first step leading up to the second floor. Rachel hoped that seeing the doll siting right in front of the door would bring joy to its owner if they ever returned, especially since she and Ryan had taken three jackets and a beanie from them.

As soon as she opened the front door Rachel noticed the trail of dried blood continued on the porch and down the steps to the walkway where it suddenly stopped. She inferred that the rain, the water from the melting snow, or a combination of both washed away the blood that was not covered by the roof. Rachel then closed the door behind her and walked down the steps and into the rain. She walked across the walkway, got on the sidewalk, and began to walk away from 1216 Franklin Avenue. Once Rachel reached then end of the block one house over at the intersection of Franklin and Olive, she noticed that there was a bright light a few blocks ahead of her. Convinced that the light was coming from the base Megan said was not that far from 1216 Franklin Avenue, she crossed the street and began to try and find a way to the source of the light.


	19. Arriving At Station Four

It was now around 2:30 in the morning but Station Four still looked like it did during daytime. Guards on the towers monitored the surrounding area with their large spotlights, Deplorables patrolled the perimeter with German Shepard K-9 units trained to only respond to commands in German, and a maintenance crew prepared the runway for an arriving plane. By this moment, Rachel had found her way to the gate that separated Station Four from the rest of Royal Woods. She pulled out the pair of wire cutters she took from the toolbox she found in 1216 Franklin Avenue and began to cut through a section of the wire fence, the same section Megan warned Ryan was still too secure.

Unaware of the base's security layout, Rachel began to cut through the thick wire so that she could enter Station Four. Even from about a mile away and on the other side of the gate, she could see the open hangar attached to the main building, a large rectangular cube shaped complex with a taller structure in the center leading up to a control tower that had a perfect view on clear days and a gun turret over the opening of the hangar. As she cut through the wire she heard a voice over the intercom command all of the members of the engineering team to report to Hangar One immediately. After hearing that and thinking that her father's team was the one being called to a possible location she could see, Rachel immediately began pushing harder on the wire cutters to get through the gate faster.

Meanwhile, back at 1216 Franklin Avenue, Ione screamed at her husband as he walked away from the plane in the rain, "Where are you going?!"

"I'm going to follow Rachel, the path is clear!" Peter replied in a scream.

"Alone? Good luck," Ione wished her husband.

"I don't need luck, I have you," Peter said as he patted his backpack.

"Who says I'm going?" Ione asked in a hysterical confusion.

"No, I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to Erebus," Peter replied as he patted his sword on its hilt.

Ione bowed and shook her head, and said to herself before jumping out of the plane to follow Peter, "God, one day that sword is going to get us all killed."

At the same time, Sabu, who was fixing the Hotspot, noticed that the plane had gone silent. When he looked up from the pilot's seat where he was sitting, he found that entire plane had been deserted.

After beating his eyes around the plane and turning around to see Peter and Ione walk out of the backyard from the cockpit window, he spoke to himself in his native Arabic as he returned to fixing the Hotspot, "'Iilaa 'ayn hum dhahibuna? 'Iidha ead Rayan qabl 'an yafealau, sanatruk dunuha."

(Where are they going? If Ryan returns before they do, we'll leave without them.)

Back on Station Four, Rachel had finally cut through the thick wire and was now crawling on the pavement to avoid being spotted by the guards. Her idea was to crawl around the many large objects lying around, like vehicles and crates, so that they could keep her hidden as she got closer to the main hangar. Meanwhile, to the right of where Rachel sneaked in, Ryan and Megan had cut the wire gate and were now hiding behind some crates. Ryan pulled out a pair of binoculars from his backpack and peered over the crates to get a view of what or who was in front of them.

After seeing a group of people being moved to the opening of the main hangar by a squad of Deplorables, Ryan passed the binoculars to Megan, and asked, "Do you see Alcroft out there?"

At the same time, Peter and Ione had made it to the opening in the fence Rachel had made, and Ione said, "Rachel's not here, we've lose her."

"Have Patience, Ione," Peter replied as he rested his hand on her shoulder.

Back with Ryan and Megan, the former UST cargo pilot spotted seven people being escorted out of the hangar into the rain, and one high ranking officer following the Deplorables who were moving the seven other people. Of those seven individuals being escorted by the Deplorables, six of them wore the UST Army Combat Uniform consisting of brown T-shirt, camouflage jacket and pants, and a pair of tan Army Combat Boots. The other individual, the brown-haired leader of the team, Joshua Alcroft, wore a UST Class A Army Service Uniform, consisting of a white button down shirt, a black tie, a dark coat, army blue slacks, and black socks and jump boots. Even though he wore a uniform similar to the other officers, his lacked the all of the medals and decorative elements as he didn't really have a career in the military. Instead, he was given the uniform when he was taken from the Neokosmos Space Station project in Pomona to work on this new ambitious project in Royal Woods.

"That's him, that's him, Joshua, in the dark suit. The one near all of the people in camo," Megan told Ryan as she passed the binoculars over to him.

As Ryan grabbed the binoculars from Megan and looked through them to find Josh, he heard the noise of a plane landing a second after spotting the dark suit Megan pointed out. A C-20 Gulfstream IV had just landed at the far end of Station Four and was now taxiing closer to the main hangar where the ground crew dressed in reflective orange safety vests walked out and began guiding the plane to a safe area with their hand-held flash batons.

Ryan pushed Megan down so that the guards that were monitoring the runway wouldn't spot them, and then told her, "Go find us a plane in one of the other hangars, then go back to the plane and help Sabu bring all of the stuff over."

Megan got off the floor, but when she saw Ryan taking off his backpack and pulling out his rifle, she asked him, "What are you doing?"

"You heard me," Ryan dismissively replied as he pointed towards the other hangars to the right.

"You said we came here just to have a look," Megan reminded him, suspicious as to why he was not leaving.

"I'm here, I'm looking. Go. Hurry!" Ryan screamed to get Megan to go away and do as he commanded.

The plane came to a complete stop and stairs formed out of the door that opened from the top. This door now acted as a ramp with steps so that the six Deplorable Guards armed with automatic rifles inside could come out of the plane. Three of these Deplorable Guards stood to the left of the stairs while the other three stood to the right as their commanding officer, Anthony Collins, walked out of the plane wearing a dark overcoat over his uniform to keep himself dry.

From the edge of the hangar, Josh and the Post Commander of Station Four, Mason Bartholomew Sabin, left behind the rest of the group and met Anthony halfway between the plane and the hangar.

After Post Commander Mason Sabin shook hands with the Lieutenant, welcoming him to Station Four, Anthony turned to face Joshua, who was walking towards him, and said, "Excellent News, Alcroft, the system works. You must be very proud."

"As proud as I can be, Lieutenant Collins," Josh replied as the rain ran down his body, essentially covering the great shame he felt inside.

Josh noticed Anthony massaging his right cheek, and asked, "Lieutenant Collins, are you alright?"

"I think I chipped a molar, I wish to see a dentist while I'm here," Anthony replied.

"Sorry, but our dentist, Dr. Feinstein, was removed from the base a few months ago. But, but, there is someone who could help you," Josh replied, informing Anthony of the base's situation.

"Lynn, Lynn, get over here!" Josh screamed at one of his team members.

Once the balding man with curly brown hair that Josh called over made it over to where his team member was standing, a move that would end up saving his life, Josh introduced him to Anthony, saying, "Lieutenant Collins, this is Lynn Loud Sr., my IT guy, his wife, Rita, is a dental assistant and has taken over for Dr. Feinstein in his absence."

Anthony immediately stared down Lynn, and replied, "Oh, yes, I'm quite aware of you and your delinquent band of children. All of them managed to escape the base, that's why Dr. Feinstein was _removed_ , as you say. He aided in the escape, correct? Not to mention Metalmouth Loud and her pathetic comic strip where all she does is spread falsehoods about President Thump."

As both men were clearly shaken up by Anthony's stare, despite the fact that they were much older than him, Josh looked Lynn in the eye, and asked, "Anyways, Lynn, do you think Rita could take a look at Lieutenant Collins' teeth?"

"I think she can make the time," Lynn replied, terrified to look Anthony in the eye.

Anthony turned his stare from Lynn to Josh, and said, "Very well, we'll get to that once we're done here. Alcroft, gather the rest of your entire team, I have an announcement."

While Josh signaled to the rest of his team to come over, Megan had found a plane, a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, to take and was now on her way of helping Sabu bring their equipment over to this new plane to keep the Deplorables from finding it and compromising the Resistance. At the same time, Rachel was sneaking around the runway, trying to find a place near the hangar where she could hide.


	20. True Colors

A few seconds later, the remaining five members of Josh's team walked out into the rain and approached Anthony. Four of them were young engineers in their late twenties that Josh met while he worked at Cal Poly Pomona. The so-called leader of this small clique was Mario Disla, the slouching, tanned skin, hooked-nose man with bags under his eyes and reddish-brown hair styled in a bowl cut with the sides intact. Next to him were his lifelong friends; Cameron Lewis, an African American man with glasses, a skinny neck, and a bloated gut, Timothy Coughlan, a man with light skin, freckles, and glasses who combed his frizzy red hair to the side, causing it to stick out and Daniel Taylor, a short man with dark red hair, freckles, and glasses. These four friends went back; as socially awkward tweens they found a sense of camaraderie designing and constructing various projects in their _Future Engineers Club_. Every Mardi Gras, the Middle School, Jim Jr. Junior High, in their hometown of Yucaipa would host a float building contest, and they one every year, except in 2002 when they lost to the _Audio Visual Club_.

The remaining member was Beatrix Yates, a tall, young woman with tanned skin and long black hair that ran down to her waist. Unlike the others, she wasn't dragged from California to work on this secret project. She was taken from her family while she was at her computer coding class at the Royal Woods Community College by a group of Deplorables a month after Kabadaian's Purge. From there, she was taken to Station Four, which at that point was still under construction. One of the first orders Kabadaian created for Thump to put his rubber stamp signature on was to create seven stations around the country to decentralize the nuclear arsenal. This was the project she was put to work on, alongside two other residents of the street she lived on, the father, Lynn Sr., and daughter who escaped Station Four, Lisa.

Unlike the majority of her team, Beatrix wore a white armband, one of the identification systems for the "Undesirables" in the UST, over her right sleeve. Josh wore one with a green Star of David, or a "Sheriff's star" as the UST government tried to pass it as, Cameron wore one with a brown circle, and she wore an armband with a brown circle, representing her African American heritage from her father's side, with a white backslash running down the lower left side, representing the "racial impurity" in her. The _Official UST Identification Badge Booklet_ said that if someone was half Black and half Asian they would have to wear a slanted oval that was half brown and half yellow, and the logic of having a shape colored in the fraction that a various ethnic or racial group contributed to the makeup of that person continued onto various other combinations. However, when someone was part European Caucasian, they received a white backslash to represent they were a result of the, as the booklet stated, "Globalist, Zionist, Leftist scheme to destroy the White race known as 'White Genocide.'" She also had her "attractiveness ranking" from the Fat-Shaming Commission, a seven, placed under the circle, thus leading to much unwanted attention. Most of the time, she received the ogling eyes of Mario and his friends who had probably never spent so much time this close to a woman. The rest of the time, she was on the lookout for wandering Deplorables who often asked for sexual favors and had previously beaten and assaulted her and other women.

Once the five members were in front of him, Anthony turned to Josh on his right, and asked, "Is this all of them?"

"Yes," Josh replied.

With around twenty Deplorables standing behind the four engineers and coder, Anthony began to read their surnames off the name tags sewn to their uniforms. He stood in the center of the front row with Post Commander Sabin to his left, Josh and Lynn Sr. to his right, and his squad of six Deplorable guards, with the only thing differentiating them from the standard Deplorables being the two vertical silver bars on the right piece of shoulder armor, behind him. Meanwhile, Ryan had his AS50 sniper rifle standing on its bipod over the crates covering him. When he peered through the scope, he was easily able to spot Josh's head.

Back with the rest of Josh's team, Anthony raised his voice in the rain, and said, "Gentlemen, and lady, one of you betrayed the UST."

As Mario, his friends, and Beatrix all looked at each other in confusion, Anthony continued, "One of you has conspired with a pilot to send a message to the enemy."

"And I urge that traitor to step forward," Anthony commanded as he pointed to the ground in front of him with his right index finger.

It was at this moment that Josh knew his secret was out, the UST knew about the message he sent. However, rather than pull Anthony to the side and confess, he swallowed the saliva in his mouth, essentially swallowing his tongue. While Josh was having a crisis of conscious, a half-mile away, Ryan was aiming for the perfect headshot. However, with the rain coming down and blocking the scope, Ryan was having a hard time aiming the shot. He kept wiping the scope with his hand, but it just kept getting covered in water. Returning to the interrogation and seeing that no one was confessing to the crime, Anthony gestured his Deplorable Guards to come forward.

Even with his Deplorable Guards that that much closer to Josh's team, no one admitted to sending the message, leading Anthony to sigh, and say, "Very well, I'll consider it a group effort, then."

"Ready!" Anthony screamed at his Deplorable Guards, scaring both Josh and the members of his team.

"Aim!" Anthony ordered, leading his Deplorable Guards to raise their rifles at the members of Josh's team.

"No, no, no, no," Cried out all of the members of Josh's team who were now clutching their hands together and begging for their lives to be spared.

"And, Fire!" Anthony commanded, making Josh realize that he needed to do something to stop his team members from being executed.

Josh immediately ran in between his team and Anthony's Deplorable Guards with his arms spread out, screaming, "Stop, stop, stop, Collins, stop! It was me! It was me.

From a distance, Ryan watched the members of Josh's team beg for their lives to be spared through the scope of his rifle. Noticing that everyone was distracted with team members, he realized that this was the perfect opportunity to take Josh out as the Deplorables would most likely fire at the crowd anyways. He moved his rifle to Josh's position, and he put his right index finger on the trigger once he spotted Josh's head through the scope.

In clear defiance of Anthony, who stood straight with his arms crossed across his chest, Josh said, "They have nothing to do with it, spare them."

Anthony puckered his lower mouth together as he thought about what the appropriate punishment would be for the traitor. He signaled Josh to approach him by sticking his right hand out and bending his middle and index finger back and forward. As Joshua moved away from his team members and approached Anthony, Ryan got a better view of him through his scope. He now had the opportunity to fulfill Alex's orders, but something overcame him and stopped him from firing his weapon. Ryan felt a cold force surround him, but it wasn't the wind or something caused by the rain. He couldn't explain what it was, but it effectively stopped him from killing Josh. Ryan pulled his rifle back from the crates, put it on the floor, and put his hands to his face in order to contemplate what had just occurred.

With an angry look on his face, Anthony didn't take his nefarious stare away from Josh's nervous face as he told his squad of Deplorable Guards, "Fire!"

Josh immediately closed his eyes when he heard the gunshots coming from Anthony's Deplorable Guard's rifles. All of the bullets passed Josh and penetrated the members of his team. Immediately after being shot, Mario, Cameron, Timothy, Daniel, and Beatrix fell to the floor; the Deplorable Guards even continued to repeatedly shoot Cameron and Beatrix's bodies until they were no longer identifiable, all because they weren't White. It was during this commotion that Josh tried to ignore by closing his eyes that Anthony punched him, causing him to slip on the wet floor and fall on his knees. And, even though he was far away, Ryan saw Anthony punch Josh to the floor. In response to what he saw, he pulled out his binoculars from his backpack that he rested next to the crates, and was in complete shock when he saw Anthony standing above a defeated Josh.


	21. Attack On Station Four

Anthony didn't waste any time to kick Josh when he was literally down; he knelt down, and told Josh, "How do I know the system works? Let me share with you some details."

Back at the crates, Ryan looked around the opening of the hangar in order to learn more about the facility through his binoculars when all of a sudden he spotted Rachel getting closer to the building. He watched as Rachel crawled across the ground in the rain and stood on her knees once she arrived behind a stack of crates.

As he observed Rachel sneaking around and turned to look at Anthony and Josh, Sabu came on the walkie-talkie, and asked, "Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, can you hear me?"

Ryan pulled the walkie-talkie out of his backpack, and responded, "I'm here, did you fix the Hotspot and send the message?"

"Yes, but we have a problem. Detroit has sent a fighter squadron to attack the station, you have to evacuate immediately," Sabu told Ryan from the plane as Megan was busy packing all of Ryan and Sabu's items to move them over to the new plane she found.

"No, no, no, no, tell them to put the strike on hold, Rachel's near the hangar!" Ryan screamed frantically, ordering Sabu to inform the Detroit branch to not attack Station Four.

While Ryan observed Rachel, who was observing a man in a dark overcoat staring down someone on their knees, Anthony, the man in the overcoat being observed by Rachel, stared Josh, the man on his knees, and said slowly as he counted the points he made with his fingers, "Chappaqua, Wendy Rogers, her band of Liberal cucks, the last relic of the Democratic party, all gone."

After processing the information Anthony gave him, the fact that his work wiped out an entire town of the face of the earth, Josh courageously looked Anthony in the eyes, and replied, "You'll never win."

"Now, where have I heard that before?" Anthony chuckled in response, referring to the various pundits in the media who said that Thump could never win the election, along with Post Commander Sabin who said it to Lynn Sr., causing him to replay the tragedy that unfolded outside his house the day his family was dragged onto the base in his mind.

Meanwhile, at the Resistance's Detroit branch, the few personnel that were still awake at 2:30 AM were doing their jobs, mainly responding to various communications. Unlike the LA, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Denver branches of the Resistance, Detroit was not blessed with mountains to hide their facility from UST satellites. While the intelligence faction of the branch was based in the Packard Automotive Plant, which was once one of the most advanced car factories in the world and now laid abandoned and hid the Resistance from peering Deplorable eyes, the military faction hid their equipment on one of the branch member's property, located in the rural area of Richmond Township in Macomb County, a county which was crucial for Thump to win Michigan during the election. At the Packard Automotive Plant, Annie Wetta, a former Librarian with short reddish-brown hair and glasses who was kicked out of her home in Royal Woods when the UST began building Station Four received a coded message from Sabu. Once she decoded the message, she read the first line that read "Relay from Captain Rodriguez" to herself.

"Commander Kikuchi," Wetta said, calling for her commanding officer and fellow former Royal Woods resident, Kotaro Kikuchi.

Once Kotaro, a dark haired Asian man, approached Wetta, she read, "Captain Rodriguez requesting a delay on air support, Resistance forces on sight, please confirm."

This sent chills down Kotaro's and everyone else's spines as their fighter jets had taken off over a minute ago, but he snapped out of his state of shock, and screamed, "Get Master Sergeant Santiago on, get him on now!"

"They're already engaged, sir," Howard McBride, a red haired man who was one of the earliest members of the Resistance, eerily responded.

The fighter jets had past the point of no return, they could no longer return to their base as they had been detected by Station Four's flight trackers. Immediately, an emergency siren went on all across the base, catching the attention of everyone. Josh moved his eyes from Anthony's face, Anthony got up from kneeling to look around, and Rachel got up from behind the crates as she heard the roaring sound of fighter jets flying through the air get louder and louder.

Coming from the northeast, a group of ten fighter jets stolen from the UST military and now painted with blue stripes to distinguish them as Resistance, fighters came into view. These ten planes were a just some of the Detroit branch's Air Force squadron, affectionately dubbed "Loud Squadron" by the squadron's Master Sergeant. Five of the squadron members flew F-15 Eagle jets, four flew F-15E Strike Eagle jets, and the leader of Loud Squadron, Master Sergeant Bobby Santiago Jr., a young man with dark hair and tanned skin who participated in the first mission to steal military vehicles and weapons for the Resistance and learned how to fly a plane by traveling the country to help establish Resistance bases all around, flew in the Detroit branch's sole F-16 Fighting Falcon. As they got closer to the main building, everyone got a better view of the jets, including Peter and Ione who were standing close to the gate on the inside of the perimeter. All of a sudden, every member of Loud Squadron launched one of their bombs at Station Four, shaking the ground and frightening everyone.

Realizing that Sabu's message had been sent too late, Ryan said to himself before packing up in order to get closer to main hangar, "Rachel, no."

"Return fire! To your stations! Get out fighters in the air, now!" Post Commander Sabin ordered the various Deplorables around him to do as Loud Squadron passed over them and prepared to turn around for another bombing run.

Believing that there was no point in hiding anymore, a Rachel overpowered by emotion ran out from behind the crates, and yelled out, "Daddy!"

This call immediately caught the attention of everyone in the area, Post Commander Sabin, Lynn Sr., Anthony, and of course, Josh. When Josh first heard the voice, he thought he was going crazy, until he saw his middle child standing next to the hangar, and while the voice was unfamiliar to Lynn Sr., he did recognize the jacket and beanie that the woman who screamed was wearing as ones owned by his two eldest daughters. Josh immediately began walking towards Rachel, but unfortunately, Loud Squadron had turned around and were preparing to drop some more bombs. Anthony looked up and saw Loud One, the jet being piloted by Master Sergeant Santiago, getting closer to the main hangar as Josh got closer to his daughter. Josh and Rachel were now about half way to the spot where they would meet when all of a sudden a bomb dropped by Loud Leader dedicated a few yards from where Josh was standing, sending him, Rachel, about ten Deplorables, Lynn Sr., Post Commander Sabin, Anthony, and his six Deplorable Guards into the air.

Loud Squadron had just passed Station Four again, and were preparing for another bombing run when Post Commander Sabin ordered five UST Air Force fighter pilots to go into the air and shoot the enemy jets down. Meanwhile, in the gun turret on top of the main hangar, two Deplorables manned the weapon and prepared to shoot down passing enemy jets as well. Once Loud Squadron turned around for another bombing run, along with trying to shake off the UST jets that were trying to bring them down, the Deplorables in the gun turret had a clear shot and shot down one of the F-15 Eagle jets, Loud Seven. The destruction of this jet caught the attention of everyone, including Ryan, who was trying to get closer to Rachel but had to fend off Deplorables that spotted him, and Sabu and Megan, who were busy moving two crates of supplies from their crash site on 1216 Franklin Avenue to a hangar in Station Four where their new plane awaited them.

While Rachel lied on the ground unconscious after being thrown up into the air and dropped down, two of Anthony's Deplorable Guards picked up their dazed commanding officer off the ground as Post Commander Sabin told him, "Lieutenant Collins, you need to evacuate, we'll deal with it."

As Anthony and his Deplorable Guards prepared to evacuate Station Four in the C-20 Gulfstream IV, the Deplorables controlling the gun turret were on a role as they shot down another one of the F-15 Eagle jets, Loud Nine. At the same time, three of the UST jets were in pursuit of Loud One, but before any one of them could take a shot at the leader, one of the F-15E Strike Eagle jets, Loud Three, managed to shoot down two of the UST jets. Unfortunately, Loud Three was then shot down by another one of the UST jets, leaving Loud One unprotected. Seeing that this Resistance jet was in trouble, Ione grabbed her husband's sword from his backpack and waited until the UST jet chasing Loud One passed a certain spot so that she could throw Erebus in the air like it was a boomerang. As Loud One was dodging being shot down by the UST jet, the pilot in the UST jet did not notice the sword flying towards him, catching him by surprise when it damaged the right wing. Miraculously, as the UST jet spun out of control, it crashed into the gun turret, killing the pilot and both of the Deplorables inside the gun turret.

Seeing that they had made four bombing runs and had already lost three fighters, Master Sergeant Santiago decided to order the remaining members of Loud Squadron to return to their base. Before they left Royal Woods, two of the F-15E Strike Eagle jets, Loud Two and Loud Five, made sure to shoot down the remaining two UST jets, and one of the F-15 Eagle jets, Loud Six, made sure to bomb the hangar where the UST jets came from to ensure that none of them would follow them. Now that they were in the clear, the seven remaining members of Loud Squadron flew away into the rainy night as if nothing had occurred in Station Four.

As Anthony boarded his plane and planned to head back to his base in Boston, he turned around to observe the damaged the Resistance had created. The two Deplorable Guards still on the ground pointed their rifles towards the sky as Anthony looked down to the ground and spotted the unconscious body of Joshua Alcroft, mangled and covered in blood and explosion residue. Before making his way into the plane, he spit a wad of his saliva towards Josh, as an insult for the role he played in luring the Resistance to attack Station Four, as well for just being Jewish.


	22. Looking Into His Eyes

The sound of the C-20 Gulfstream IV Anthony was in preparing to take off was enough to wake Rachel up after being thrown to the ground by an explosion. She looked up from the ground and all she saw was fires raging in the rain and Anthony's plane taking off at the far end of Station Four. Most of the people standing around her father were now gone, Anthony and his Deplorable Guards had left in the plane and Post Commander Sabin had returned to the base to return order to his installation. However, there were a lot of lifeless bodies lying around, including those of her father's team members and those of the Deplorables who died during the attack. Locating her father's body was quite difficult in the dark, but she noticed two bodies moving slightly in the distance and decided that they would be the best place to start.

She approached the moving body closest to her, as her father was not that far from her before the explosion, knelt down in front of it, saw that it was her father, and grabbed his cheeks and said, "Daddy, daddy, it's me."

Josh's eyes slightly opened as his middle child shook his head with her hands, and said, "It's Rachel."

"Rachel? Shayna Punim," Josh whispered as he finally got a view of his daughter.

"Daddy, I saw your message, the video, I saw it," Rachel said as she stared him in the eyes, letting her father know that his gamble of sending a message payed off.

"It must be destroyed," Josh replied, referring to the system he created.

"I know, I know, we will," Rachel assured him.

Josh managed to conjure enough strength to run his fingers through Rachel's wavy brown hair, wet from the rain, and say, "Rachel, look at you. I have so much to tell you."

Unfortunately, Josh did not have enough time to tell Rachel everything that had occurred to his during the time they spent apart. The explosion that sent him flying into the air and immediately threw him down to the ground burnt his back, causing him gush out blood. Not to mention the drop he took damaged his spine and internal organs, inducing severe internal bleeding. It immediately became harder for him to breath, causing him to gag and cough out more blood. The last moment of Josh's life was spent in the grasp of his daughter, he wished that he could have been with his family instead of locked away in a lab for the last year, but things never turn out the way you would have hoped.

Rachel noticed her father's eyes turn towards the back of his head, thus she started shaking his head, as she cried out, "Daddy! No, no! Daddy, daddy, come on!"

It soon sunk in that her father was dead and nothing could bring this back, causing Rachel to cry even more than she had all day. Her commitment to living her life as a pessimist was as dead as her father, she now knew that she could no longer live life by ignoring her emotions. Rachel knew her father would want his death to be handled in proper Jewish fashion, but seeing that they were in the middle of a battle scene she decided to start by reciting a prayer. Josh had studied to be a Rabbi before he received an education in Software Engineering, and he passed down what he had learned about his faith to his children.

One of the prayers he taught Rachel and her sisters was the Mourner's Kaddish, the prayer you recite when a loved one passes, and the one Rachel said, "Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba b'al'ma di v'ra khir'utei. V'yam'likh mal'khutei b'chayeikhon uv'yomeikhon uv'chayei d'khol beit yis'ra'eil, ba'agala uviz'man kariv v'im'ru. Amen."

As Rachel continued reciting the rest of the Mourner's Kaddish, two Deplorables ran out into the rain, and when one saw Rachel, he pointed at her and told his partner, "Over there, take her down."

Luckily, Ryan arrived right on time and shot both Deplorables before Running to Rachel, and saying as he tugged on her arm, "Rachel, we've got to go, come on."

"I can't leave him," Rachel replied as she held her father's lifeless body in her arms.

Suspecting that more Deplorables were headed their way, Ryan shook Rachel, and sternly told her, "Listen, Rachel, he's gone. Come on."

"I can't leave him," Rachel whispered in a monotone voice.

"Come on," Ryan said as he pulled Rachel away from Josh's mangled corpse, his left leg was twisted at the knee and blood dripped out his mouth and back.

Ryan was right to suspect that more Deplorables were headed their way, because as soon as they got close to the hangar entrance a wave of Deplorables ran through the fiery debris. There was no way for Ryan to shoot them all down before they killed him, luckily, Peter swung Erebus into the air like Ione did during the battle, and it cut into the Deplorables' armor and skin. Once all of the Deplorables fell to the ground, Peter and Ione ran over to where Ryan and Rachel were. Peter grabbed Erebus from the ground and put it back in his backpack while Ione told Ryan where the plane Megan commandeered was stationed.

The four made their way to another hangar, but as Rachel turned back to get one final view of her father's body, all she saw was the other survivor, Josh's IT guy, Lynn Sr., screaming as he ran back to Station Four with a limping left leg, "Rita, Rita, Rita!"

Rachel, Ryan, Peter, and Ione were now on the run from Deplorable Scouts, a branch of Deplorables that specialized in tracking fugitives down. They wore a lighter version of the black armor that standard Deplorables wore under their black uniform, had three vertical silver bars on the right piece of their shoulder armor, and the leader of each squad lead a pack of German Shepherds. The dogs were specifically trained to only respond to commands in German, because of how harsh and commanding the language sounds and to fester even more Nazi parallels within their subculture.

As the Deplorable Scouts caught onto their trail, shot at the group in the dark, and let their German Shepherds loose to "sic 'em," Ryan kicked back at the angry dog next to his leg, and screamed, "Oh God, oh God, oh God, they're catching up. How do you say 'No' in German?"

"Nyet, nyet!" Rachel screamed at the dogs.

"That's Russian, _Pendeja_!" Ryan replied, using a pejorative term used in his family's native language.

Luckily for the group, Megan and Sabu had gotten the new plane, a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, out of the hangar and had the cockpit facing the coming Deplorable Scouts. To the surprise of the Deplorable Scouts who thought that one of their fellow Deplorables was using the huge plane as a way to block the runaways from escaping, grenades were being thrown out of the cockpit windows. The explosions blew up or knocked out the pursuing Deplorable Scouts, they dropped their flashlights on the ground and the German Shepherds scattered as their masters were unable to give them orders.

"Well done, you're a dirty Liberal now," Sabu taunted Megan after she threw the last grenade out the window, causing a smile to appear on her face.

As Sabu guided the plane down the runway, Megan told him to open the back door, and she headed to the back of the plane where she spotted the rest of the group trying to get on, and encouraged them to hurry up by screaming, "Let's go, let's go, come on, let's move!"

"Come on, let's get out of here, move, move, move!" Megan screamed at Peter and Ione, who had not yet made it onto the plane like Rachel and Ryan, from the edge of the door.

Once the rest of the group had made it onto the plane, Megan ran back towards the cockpit, and screamed, "Okay, Sabu, let's go!"

"Copy that," Sabu replied before closing the back door with the controls on the panel in the cockpit.

Once the back door closed, the inside of the transport aircraft went completely dark. Luckily, the lights came on a second later as the plane continued gaining speed on the runway. From the outside, you could see the plane gaining speed and eventually getting off the ground as fires raged across Station Four. If it wasn't for the rain, the fire could have spread to the rest of Royal Woods, destroying what was left of the town.

"Don't try anything too fancy until we clear the storm," Megan told Sabu from the bottom of the stairs that lead to the cockpit.

"I understand," Sabu replied.

It was clear that Rachel was angry at Ryan, Peter sensed her anger and tried to stop her by holding onto her wrist, but she shook off Peter's grip, gave Ryan a dirty look before approaching him, and saying, "You lied to me."

"You're just trying to cope with what happened and you're taking it out on me," Ryan responded as he took of the soaking wet jacket he took from 1216 Franklin Avenue and began to put all of his loose articles in his backpack.

Rachel didn't take her eyes off Ryan, and accused him of attempted murder, by saying "You went to the base to kill my father."

"You don't know shit about what you're talking about," Ryan replied as he took his eyes of Rachel and focused on his stuff.

"Are you denying it?"

"Like I said before, you're trying to cope with what happened and you're taking it out on me. I've seen this before."

"I bet you have."

"They know!" Rachel screamed as she pointed at Peter and Ione.

She brought her arm down from pointing at the Albanys, and continued, "You lied about why we came to Michigan, and you lied about why you sneaked onto the base."

"I had every chance to kill him, but did I?" Ryan asked in an angry tone.

"Did I?!" Ryan screamed at everyone else around him.

"You might as well have. My father was living proof and you put him at risk. It was a Resistance bomb that killed him," Rachel said, referring to the bomb dropped by Loud Leader that ended up costing Josh's life.

"I had orders, orders that I disobeyed, but you wouldn't understand that," Ryan snapped back, knowing that Rachel lived a large portion of her life not caring about others.

Unfortunately for Ryan, her father's death brought up years of emotions, leading Rachel to ask, "Orders? When you know they're wrong?"

"You guys are worse than Deplorables," Rachel said before turning away, perpetuating the right-wing maxim that the Resistance and other similar groups were actually leftist terrorists.

This struck a chord inside Ryan, causing him to turn around, and scream at Rachel, "What the hell do you know!"

He immediately grabbed Rachel's arm, turned her around, looked her in the eyes, and said, "We all don't have the luxury of deciding when we want to care about something. Suddenly this fight is real for you? Some of us live it every day, even before Thump became President. My mother was deported when I was six years old."

Rachel sarcastically chuckled at Ryan's last comment, and said before turning away, "Deported? Yeah, right."

"Why's that so funny?" Ryan angrily asked.

"I mean, look at you, all you got to do is hit the gym and you'd look like Hitler's wet dream," Rachel said, pointing out Ryan's dirty blond hair, light skin, and blue eyes, the antithesis of the stereotypical "Illegal Immigrant."

Ryan continued to put his emotions out in the open so that Rachel could know the reason he opposed Thump, and for her to learn some perspective, saying, "Yeah, lucky me. I get all of these traits from my Dad, he's from a town called Jalostotitlán in the _Los Altos_ region of the Mexican state of Jalisco. There's a lot of White people there, surprising, isn't it? But, my Mom, no, my mom's a 'real Mexican' for you, shorter and darker than my Dad. Both of them were undocumented, they came to this country for a better life, but guess which one ICE deported when they raided my home. I was a little kid when I saw my Mom and my Aunt being dragged out of their home and being loaded into the back of a van."

Rachel wasn't about to let someone shame her minutes after her father died, so she tried to one-up Ryan in the pity department by looking at him straight in the eye, and saying, "My mother died when I was five, and now my father's dead. Both of my parents are dead now because of you."

Knowing what Rachel was up to, Ryan stared her down, and replied, "At least you know that they're at peace now. I haven't seen my mother since the day she was taken away from me. So, you're not the only one who's lost everything. Some of us just decided to do something about it."

Unable to accept defeat at such a vulnerable moment, Rachel shook her head as she tried to keep back tears from her own loss and Ryan's tragic story, and simply said, "You can't talk your way around this."

"That's the thing, I don't have to," Ryan whispered to her as he began to move away from Rachel.

He approached Megan, and asked, "Where are the communication devices from the other plane? We need to contact the LA base and tell them we're coming in a stolen plane."

"They're over there," Megan said as she pointed to two crates behind her on the other side of the plane.

Rachel watched as Ryan grabbed the crate with his communication devices, and once he had them, he turned around and asked everyone else in an annoyed tone, "Anybody else have anything to say?"

The plane was silent, the only thing they could hear was the sound of the engine and the rain, until Ryan broke the silence and said, "Good, get some sleep."

Ryan climbed up the stairs to the cockpit to sit down with Sabu as he carried the crate to send the message to the LA branch of the Resistance. Peter and Ione took Ryan's advice and sat down on two of the many seats that ran across the walls of the cargo bay. The seats didn't recline, but they would much rather sit down than continue to stay standing up. Seeing that there were so many seats and only four of them not flying the plane, Peter and Ione decided to lie down on a row of various seats. The seats made a terrible bed, but they quickly fell asleep as it was now around three in the morning local time. Megan followed the Albany's example and lied down on a row of seats on the other side of the cargo bay, and quickly fell asleep. Rachel did the same, but she could not easily fall asleep, all she could think about was her father's body lying on the floor in the rain, along with Ryan's emotional story.


	23. Inside The Orangutan's Cage

The Resistance attack on Station Four sent chills down the spines of UST officials. The number of insurgent attacks against UST targets had increased over the last few months, and the UST had lost many of their agents in the fight. All they could do now was take as much B-roll footage of Station Four on fire and interview as many survivors as possible in order to begin blasting it out on _TNN_ as soon as the sun came up. This way, they could turn an embarrassing loss into a rallying cry for the millions of Thump loyalist to stand up to the hordes of "leftist extremists" plotting to "take away" their 2016 election victory.

Kabadaian was first briefed about the attack by his personal assistant, Morgan Weiser, at his residence inside the former US Capitol Building. She first called him on his phone at three in the morning to wake him up and then delivered an iPad containing all of the information about the attack to his bedroom in the former House of Representatives chamber. After he skimmed through the report, he thanked Morgan and asked her to leave his bedroom. Once the blonde woman left the room, Kabadaian made a web call to a very important advisor of his, and he was told that it was time to execute a plan to protect the President.

The Supreme Commander put on his white dress shirt, black tie, slacks, suit, dress socks, shoes, and long overcoat and left his mansion for the airport. He had his driver take him to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, right across the Anacostia River, the Air Force base where Air Force One was stationed. Since he was essentially the President, Kabadaian could take the Boeing VC-25A wherever he desired. Air Force One had received a makeover after Kabadaian's Purge; the word "America" at the end of "United States of America" printed on both sides of the ceiling of the fuselage was replaced with "Thump" and the former American flag on the tail fin was replaced with the flag of the UST.

These changes were not simply because of regime change, they were also implemented so that Thump would feel comfortable flying in Air Force One. At first, Thump very much enjoyed flying in Air Force One as he got to feel even more as a President, however, after a while he got bored with it. He immediately switched back to his personal Boeing 757, a plane with the bottom part of the fuselage, wings, engines, and horizontal stabilizers painted in white, the top part and tail fin painted in black, with the two colors being separated by a red streak that went all the way around the plane, a giant red "T" that seemed to tear apart as you looked at it from left to right printed on both sides of the tail fin, and the name "Thump" printed in large gold letters near the cockpit on both sides. Thump Force One, as it was commonly referred to as after he began to run for President, felt more suited to his standards. He even once called Air Force One a "step down" from Thump Force One, a remark similar to the time he denigrated the White House by calling it a "Dump" as he felt it did not compare to his properties.

Once Kabadaian boarded Air Force One and ordered the pilots to take him to Palm Beach, Florida, he retreated to the President's office. Since Thump no longer cared for Air Force One, Kabadaian took it over, as he did with every other Presidential duty Thump couldn't be bothered to do. The flight was going to be about an hour and twenty minutes, and Kabadaian decided to spend the time reading the rest of the report Morgan brought over. It only took him about half an hour for him to learn that Station Four had been attacked by insurgents in stolen UST Air Force aircraft at around 2:45 AM and that Post Commander Mason Sabin was requesting supplies to repair the damage and more Deplorables to replace the ones who died during the attack.

However, after finishing the initial report he found himself with nothing to do, and he wasn't even halfway to Palm Beach. Kabadaian started to dig through the drawers of the desk and pulled out a black book with different colored _Post-it_ tabs sticking out. He read the title of the book and immediately remembered why he had this particular book. The book was called _Flowers In The Attic_ and he had asked for a copy after he raided a home in Yucaipa, California and found it and other books by the same author in a box under a child's bed. Over the last six months he read pages from the book and began to take notes on the content. Each color represented a different character and each tab had a short message relating the passage in the book to a recent point in his life.

As he flipped through the pages like he was shuffling cards his fingers got stuck on a page with a red tab and he decided to take a look at what he had taken a note of. The color red represented one of the main antagonists in the book, the Grandmother, Olivia Foxworth. Kabadaian related a lot to the Grandmother, the main goal for both of them was to dispense justice upon the "devil's spawn" as Olivia said. He also saw a lot of Olivia's daughter, Corrine, in Thump. Seeing that Corrine was a ditzy blonde who was drawn to shiny objects and could not live on her own without the many different enablers around her helping her, Kabadaian used gold tabs, Thump's favorite color, to identify all the interesting passages relating to her. He also used four other colors to identify passages relating to Corrine's four kids; blue for Chris Jr., pink for Cathy, purple for Carrie, and green for Cory. These four colors appeared the most as the story mainly revolved around these four characters, and also because many of the passages eerily resembled events he knew had occurred to the family that resided in the house he raided.

Kabadaian could have read and annotated a few more pages of the book, but he was too tired to read for leisure. Instead he rested the book on the desk and stared at the cover, a black and white image of a blonde girl in a black dress facing away from the camera and looking at the garden in front of her surrounded with five red roses all around the cover. He looked at the name of the author, VC Andrews, and let out one low chuckle when he realized that the letters in her initials, "V," "C," and "A" all appeared in the name of the aircraft, and in the same order, none the less. He rested his head on his left hand and let his fingers run through his brown hair as he decided what to do until he made it to Palm Beach. Eventually, Kabadaian decided on calling the cooking staff to bring him a pot of coffee and a mug so that he would be energized when he arrived at his destination.

An hour later at around Five in the morning, a woman was awakened from her sleep by the ringing sound of the bedroom landline. She pulled her right arm out from under the sheets and reached out towards the night stand to answer the phone. Once she had the antique phone next to her ear she was told to inform her husband that Kabadaian's plane was just about to land. She told the military officer on the other end of the line that she would pass the message to her husband and then she hung up the phone. Dressed in nothing but her black nightgown, a forty-seven year old, brown haired woman originally named Melanie Domišljav got out of her very ornate bed and put on her silk black robe.

Melanie then walked out of her crème painted bedroom decorated in gold-painted chandelier-style wall light fixtures and white and gold Victorian wallpaper and headed over to her husband's bedroom. The two did not sleep in the same bed, not because sharing a bed with someone else made it difficult for either one of them to sleep, but because Melanie could not bring herself to lie down next to her husband. Her husband was seventy-one, nearly twice her age, and underneath his external looks lied a fat, bald man.

She first met her husband at a party in New York City when she used to be a model back in the late nineties. Her husband was on a date with another woman after separating from his second wife and going through the divorce proceedings when he first noticed Melanie. He sent his date, the Norwegian heiress Elise Høyfarts, to the bathroom while he tried to get Melanie's number. Seeing that he was on a date, she refused to give this man her number, instead she asked for his. The man gave Melanie both his business and personal phone numbers and went on his way with his date.

Melanie knew the man was a so-called "ladies man," but she also knew that he was a rich man. It was then that Melanie concocted a get-rich-quick scheme that seemed perfect at the time. She ended up calling the man, he dumped his current girlfriend, and began dating Melanie. The couple broke up multiple times throughout the next few years, including during the man's short lived presidential campaign for the Reform Party's nomination in 2000, but they got back together and the couple eventually got married in 2005.

Even though she couldn't bring herself to sleep with her husband after a while, at least she had her husband's money, along with a son, Aaron, she gave birth to a year after she got married. However, karma struck back at the gold-digger when Melanie learned the truth; that after multiple bankruptcies and a series of unpaid debts to Russian oligarchs her husband was not as rich as he said and everyone thought he was. Melanie could have left her husband, however, she signed a prenup before her wedding, and thus she would be cut off from the fairly luxurious life she lived. She also knew that if she didn't continue to have Botox injections quite often her looks would quickly fade away, narrowing her opportunity of finding another rich husband. Not to mention that she had gotten to the point where she needed constant Botox injections to keep looking fairly attractive, or risk becoming some kind of Botox monster. So, she decided to stay married with her husband, even if it meant having to stay in a separate bedroom, isolated from everyone else.

Melanie opened the door to her husband's bedroom, another ornately decorated room covered in gold paint, and walked inside, something she rarely did as the thought of her husband's room brought back horrendous memories of his disgusting, old body on top of her. Her husband was not in his bed, however a noise, the bubbly sound effect of someone typing on an _Android_ smartphone, was coming from the bathroom. Even though it was after five in the morning, it wasn't unusual for Melanie's husband to be up this early as he only got four hours of sleep every night and compensated for the lost sleep by consuming amphetamines prescribed to him by his crooked doctor. After his fingers hit various keys, he tweeted one of many posts on _Twitter_ that morning, "My hands, and other things, are larger than normal-size. Don't listen to hater and loser Metalmouth Loud. Luan Out Loud is FAKE NEWS! SAD!" Once Melanie stopped in front of the bathroom door she noticed that it was being guarded by two White Power Guards, the utmost loyal Deplorables flaunting white-cladded riot control gear and automatic weapons charged with protecting the Thump Family and the many of the highest officials in the UST.

She knocked on the door, heard that the person inside had finished typing on their phone as the keyboard sound effect had gone silent, and said in a thick Eastern European accent that sounded like nails running down a chalkboard, "Husband, Supreme Commander Kabadaian has arrived."

The room was quiet for a second until Melanie's husband broke the silence by flushing the toilet. As this was all she needed to do, she turned around and headed back to her own bedroom.

While she exited her husband's room, she felt the skin on the left side of her chin begin to droop, and she said to herself in her native Slovenian, "Prekleto, potreboval bom več injekcij Botoxa."

(Damn, I'm going to need more Botox injections.)

As Air Force One landed in the runway of the former Palm Beach International Airport, now a part of Station Three, and Kabadaian prepared to be transported to the man's residence, the man pressed a button on the wall to order his stylist to report to him immediately. Five minutes later, his stylist, Ilsa Umlaut, entered his ornate marble and gold restroom. The man had met Ilsa back in 1995 when he hired her to be his personal stylist, however Ilsa was not really who she said she was. Her real name was Joanna Sandsmark, and just like her boss she had been scamming gullible people out of their money since the seventies. Posing as a young immigrant, she worked at a series of jobs such as a dog groomer for over a decade and scammed her customers into paying her extra by giving them a sob story about her sad life.

Unfortunately for her, her looks began to fade once she turned forty in 1995, leading to a drop in people feeling sorry for her. That's when she heard that a real estate developer was in the market for a personal stylist, and seeing it as her only choice, she applied. She surprisingly got the job considering that the man was known as a misogynist, constantly judging women by their looks, however, Joanna also had to deal with the man repeatedly grabbing her crotch. She used her Ilsa Umlaut character to get her job, but it soon became clear to Joanna that the man was not moved by her immigrant story. She also had a habit of mixing her story up from time to time; sometimes she would say that she was from Helsinki, the capital of Finland, and other times she would say that she was from Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Fortunately for her, her boss was a complete buffoon who could not even find Finland or Sweden on a map.

The sixty-two year old blonde woman dressed in a pink turtleneck sweater, purple pants, and a white waist apron found her boss siting on the toilet in nothing but his underwear. This was nothing new for her, so she brushed it off and asked her boss in her fake Scandinavian pseudo-accent to step in the shower. Joanna also gave her boss a pair of tanning goggles to put around his eyes so that the spray tan from a spray nozzle connected to the wall via a hose would not get into his eyes. After applying a coat of orange spray tan on her boss' fat and decrepit white body, she took off the tanning goggles, revealing a flesh colored ring around his eyes, and moved onto his hair. Her boss had blond hair that he grew out long on the side as he was comply bald on the top of his head. To cover her boss' massive bald spot, Joanna placed a toupée made out of the fur of a reddish-blond Siberian weasel and began to comb the hair from the left side of his head towards the right, over the toupée. She then combed the hair from the right side of her boss' head towards the left, and combed the hair on the back of his head towards the top and around his ears to give the combover a better chance to pass as normal hair. And once he put on his white dress shirt, overly long tie, black dress socks and shoes, and dark suit and slacks, Joana's boss and Melanie's husband turned into the man everyone knew him as, the man the White Power Guard protected, President Ronald Thump.

Kabadaian had been waiting for around twenty minutes in the white and gold French Baroque styled ballroom of Thump's Florida estate, Mer-A-Lac, the same ballroom where Thump gave a speech on Super Tuesday that appeared as if New Jersey Governor Malcolm Melder was being held hostage. The ornate diamond chandeliers lit the room as the sun had not yet come up, however, the lights all turned off as Kabadaian stood waiting in the middle of the room. He didn't know what had happened, but when he saw smoke machines go off, a colorful laser show start, and a bright light turn on from the outside of the doorway leading to the ballroom, Kabadaian knew exactly what was going on. All of a sudden, the famous _Queen_ song "We are the Champions" began to play on the ballroom's surround system as a dark figure walked out into the middle of the doorway, causing the lights behind it to cast a huge shadow behind Kabadaian in the ballroom. The figure, which appeared to be wearing an animal on its head, turned and looked right and then left before beginning to shake its fist in the air. As the figure walked into the ballroom, the blaring lights on the floor that made it impossible to see the figure's face became less effective, even though Kabadaian knew who the figure was once the show started.

In an attempt to bolster his extremely fragile ego, Thump recreated his entrance to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July of 2016, an entrance that looked more like it was from one of his acts as a guess on _Wrestlewackia_ than the prologue to accepting the Republican nomination for President. He even had projectors projecting images of his supporters cheering and holding campaign signs with his name on it from a campaign rally. As calling every report that said a majority of the public was against him "Fake News" didn't work all of the time, Thump repair his ego in other areas, such as staging magnificent entrances wherever he went. As Thump puckered his lips and shook his fists as if he had a dumbbell in each hand at a crowd that only existed in the images being projected on the wall, Kabadaian rolled his eyes as Thump approached him. The follower that was once so loyal that he staged a purge to eliminate all of Thump's enemies was now annoyed at the President's antics as he had gotten to truly know the man over the past year.

Once Thump made it through the smoke and reached Kabadaian, he said, "Supreme Commander Kabadaian."

"President Thump," Kabadaian replied.

The ballroom stood silent, until Thump stopped pacing around Kabadaian, and said, "You know, you have a lot of explaining to do."

Since he knew he had to butter him up, Kabadaian got closer to Thump, and stated, "President Thump, we eliminated the Rogers and the treat they posed. Using a nuclear weapon might be an extreme choice, but it did send a harsh message to all those out there who dare question your rule."

Unfortunately for Kabadaian, Thump was not pleased with Kabadaian due to his most recent act as Supreme Commander, saying, "I don't care about what you did to Crooked Wendy, the Thump National Golf Club Westchester is now covered in fallout because of you. All of the waste from Chappaqua is now raining down on my golf club. How am I supposed to make any money out of it now?!"

Unsurprised by the fact that Thump cared more about his properties than he did about the fact that a part of the country that he was President of had been nuked by its own military, he tried to move the blame away from himself, remarking, "It was Lieutenant Collins and Major Greenfield who ordered the strike. You know how those two are."

Thump stopped pacing around Kabadaian, slowly turned around, and then said, "I know you didn't come all the way down here just to tell me that, Kabadaian."

"Well, no, I actually came down here to tell you that I have received information of great importance. For your safety, and the safety of your family, I recommend that you and your family leave Florida immediately," Kabadaian responded.

After giving it a quick thought, Thump replied, "Fine, I'll leave, but don't think I forgot about Westchester. I've already tweeted about how anyone claiming that the strike was intended to kill the Rogers is 'Fake News!'"

"Yes, President Thump," Kabadaian responded through his teeth as he was angry that Thump tweeted about the strike on Chappaqua since it would now be next to impossible to kill the story as virtually everyone in the world heard about it from Thump.

In one final attempt to ensure that Kabadaian learned not to play around with his properties, Thump approached the Supreme Commander, and said, "I expect you not to rest until you can assure me that the strike did not comprise the Thump National Golf Club Westchester, in any way."

Thump then turned around and began to walk out of the ballroom to let his wife, youngest son, stylist, and White Power Guards know that they were leaving Mer-A-Lac, but before he exited the room, he turned around at the doorway to face Kabadaian, and declared, "Oh, and by the way, why haven't you killed Luan Loud yet? She's been very mean to me in her comics. Not good!"

Kabadaian simply rolled his eyes at Thump's comments as he left the ballroom.


	24. A Council Divided

Rachel and the rest of the group arrived at the Resistance's LA branch at four in the morning Pacific Time. It took them about four hours to fly from Royal Woods, Michigan to the secret base in the Angeles National Forest in the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, but once they arrived at their destination Ryan was immediately brought to the room where Rachel was first recruited for the mission to Chappaqua. At first, the leadership did not want to let Rachel and Megan in, but Ryan was able to convince Jeffrey, Alex, Zack, and the rest of the leadership to let them enter as they were important to the mission.

When Rachel entered the room she found that each chair around the large table in the center of the room was now equipped with a webcam. One of the IT guys had just finished connecting a webcam when Rachel took a seat. Immediately after Rachel, Ryan, and Megan took their seats next to each other, many of the most influential members of the Resistance's LA branch entered the room. Jeffrey Petersen and Zack Wehrenberg took a seat to the right of Rachel, Alex Vasquez, Samantha Hale, and the blonde-haired, blue eyed Clover Baker sat to the left of Rachel, and the other influential members stood behind those seated at the table.

Once everyone in the room was settled, the many monitors in front of the table were turned on and began to display a variety of different people. Each monitor showed the most influential people from the dozens of Resistance branches spread across the country. A few of them even showed the various diplomats the Resistance sent across the world in order to gain international support for their movement. As allies of the former US supported the Resistance with resources, they promised to help in an all-out attack on the UST under one condition, the Resistance had to shut down all of the UST's nuclear weapons as they did not want to get struck in retaliation by Thump.

Luckily, the day had come for the Resistance in the form of Rachel's information on how to shut down the UST's nuclear arsenal. Now, all the LA branch had to do was convince the rest of the branches to act on this new information, a task that was easier said than done. The fact of the matter was that the Resistance as a whole was still much divided on how to act as an alliance. Each branch had its own political ideology that ranged from left to center-right, and this caused tensions between the different branches. When Jeffrey briefed the Resistance Council on Ryan's mission and what Rachel had discovered, he urged the other branches to support a mission to retrieve the "Daughter of Sin" virus. Unfortunately, the debate that grew out of Jeffrey's request spiraled out of control. They went from debating an attack to whether or not they had the capacity to pull off such an act. About ten minutes into the debate, the majority of the Resistance Council agreed not just to cancel a mission to retrieve the "Daughter of Sin" virus, but to begin hiding even more.

After hearing what everyone else had to say, Kimi Finster, who appeared to be in a white room and separated from the rest of the delegation of Resistance diplomats in Berlin, Germany, said, "We must scatter our resources even more. It's either that or we surrender."

Immediately after, the head of the cyber-warfare department of the Resistance's LA branch who designed the system to allow the various Resistance branches to communicate without getting caught by the UST, Zack Wehrenberg, interjected, "Are we seriously discussing disbanding something that we've worked so hard to create?"

"We can't just give in," added the blond-haired Colonel of the Resistance Air Force, and the leader of the fighter squadron of the Resistance's Seattle branch, Football Squadron, Arnold Shortman, from his base.

"We joined an alliance, not a suicide pact," replied Richard Killgallen, an African American man in his late fifties with graying hair and a graying moustache, a Gulf War veteran, and former police officer from Sheltered Shrubs, Connecticut, who used his experience to become the leader of the Resistance's Hartford Branch.

"And we've only now managed to gather our forces," said Zack.

"Gather our forces? Vasquez over here has already blown up a UST base," Ron Breckenridge, a blond-haired, green eyed, Kentucky native who spoke in a South Midland accent, and represented the more conservative Louisville branch of the Resistance, exclaimed as he pointed at Alex through the monitor.

Without hesitation, Alex stared directly through the webcam, and replied, "A decision needed to be made."

"If all-out war right now is what you want, you'll fight alone," Kimi replied angrily at Alex from her secret location overseas.

Seeing that the discussion was beginning to break down Richard Killgallen asked the rest of the Resistance Council, "If this is how it's going to be, why do we even have an alliance at all?"

In a quick response, Colonel Shortman replied as he pointed to Rachel through the monitor, "Well, if she's telling the truth, we need to act now."

In an attempt to regain control of the dialogue, Jeffrey said, "Ladies and gentlemen, please settle down! Loud Leader?"

Once the rest of the Resistance Council calmed down, Loud Squadron's Master Sergeant Bobby Santiago Jr. hesitantly replied, "It's simple, the UST has weapons of mass destruction, and the Resistance doesn't have any or any way to combat them."

Completely dissatisfied with the conversation, Ron Breckenridge chuckled, before saying, "A way to shut off the nukes, utter nonsense, just like that DeVille sibling-humping story."

In an attempt to reason with Breckenridge, an impatient Rachel asked, "Why would my father lie, what would he gain?"

"To lure our forces out of hiding and destroy us once and for all," Alex blurred out, as she had no reason to trust Rachel or her father, Josh.

As Richard Killgallen began to see the flaws in Rachel's story, he asked her, "You want us to risk everything, based on what? The dying words of your father, a UST engineer."

"Don't forget the UST pilot," Alex pointed out, referring to Megan who was siting only a few chairs away from her.

Feeling that she and her late father were being treated like traitors, Rachel shut her eyes and clenched her twitching fists, as she replied, "My father gave his life so that we may have a chance to shut the nukes down."

"So you've told us," Commander Kotaro Kikuchi from the Resistance's Detroit branch responded.

Rationalizing that the Resistance was not yet ready to engage the UST, Kimi asked the rest of the Resistance Council, "If Thump has this kind of power, what chance do we have?"

Feeling completely dismayed by Kimi's words, Rachel replied, "What chance do we have? The question you should be asking yourselves is 'what choice?'"

As the Resistance Council listened to what Rachel had to say, she told them the one thing they did not want to hear, she said, "You can run, you can hide, you can wait until the Green Party asks for a recount. This is one of the reasons why the Democrats lost last time; you guys give up when an enemy this evil and with this much power rolls in, and you end up condemning the rest of us to an eternity of submission. The time to fight is now."

"Yes," replied a few of the Resistance Council members through the monitors, choosing to ignore the part where Rachel trashed their party so that they could get behind her call to action.

"Every moment you waste is another step closer to another Chappaqua," Rachel passionately claimed, gaining even more support from several Resistance Council members who obviously did not want another nuclear warhead going off in their country.

While Rachel's speech energized a faction of the Resistance, an even greater faction began to become even more nervous, leading Ron Breckenridge to ask, "What is she proposing?"

"Just let her speak," replied Silvia Weller, a green-eyed, redhead representative from the Resistance's Boston Branch.

After Rachel nodded at the monitor Silvia was being shown on, something that she was unsure if Silvia could figure out was meant for her, she said to the rest of the Resistance Council, "Send your best troops to Mer-A-Lac. Send everything in the Resistance's arsenal if you have to. We need to retrieve the 'Daughter of Sin' virus is we want to shut down the nukes."

Rachel's request caused an uproar through more than half of the Resistance, mumbled words began to come out of the monitor's speakers halfway through Rachel's speech, but after she was done speaking, Kimi sternly told her, "You're asking us to invade Thump's personal home based on nothing but hope."

"Every Resistance is based on hope," Rachel replied, trying to hold back tears as she began to realize the Resistance would not act on her father's information.

As Jeffrey and Zack gave each other a look that meant defeat, Richard Killgallen dreadfully responded to Rachel, "There is no hope."

As the web call began to break down even more, an exited Colonel Shortman exclaimed, "I say we fight!"

"I say the Resistance is finished!" Ron Breckenridge replied, screaming out the word "finished" at the end.

The positions of Arnold Shortman and Ron Breckenridge summarized the state of the Resistance, and as the Resistance Council members began to scream at each other even louder than before, Jeffrey broke the bickering by banging the table three times with his fist, and saying, "I'm sorry, Rachel, but without the full support of the council, the odds are just too great for a single branch of the Resistance."

The final verdict was in, the Resistance would not invade Mer-A-Lac. If it were up to Jeffrey, he would have authorized the mission; but seeing that the mission would be the biggest attack they would have ever faced, they would have needed reinforcements from other Resistance branches. Every other leader remembered the last time a team went off on a mission they passionately believed in, only to end up getting captured and executed by the Deplorables. That was why many of the Resistance Council members were hesitant to go along with this mission, their numbers were still small and they could not risk losing more fighters and equipment for something they could not even confirm. As Rachel left the room all she could see was the disappointed faces of the LA branch's leaders, even Alex appeared to be moved by Rachel's plight. Megan tried to follow the defeated Rachel, but Ryan pulled her back as he thought Rachel needed some time to cool off. Rachel simply returned to the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III to rest, and all she could think of while she tried to fall asleep was her father secretly creating the "Daughter of Sin" for the Resistance, only for it to be dismissed as a trap.


	25. What's In A Name

The rest of the group left Rachel sleep off her anger on the plane, they found somewhere to rest inside the barracks of the Resistance base. Around nine in the morning, Peter and Ione woke up from an odd sleeping cycle. They weren't used to having to take multiple short naps in order to rest like the Resistance fighters did, but it had to be done in order to make up for the Resistance's relatively small numbers. They didn't see anyone they knew around them, so they decided to head to the plane in order to check up on Rachel.

As the Albanys approached the rear boarding ramp of the plane, a voice on the intercom came on, and said, "Commander Pickles, please report to the briefing room, Commander Pickles, please report to the briefing room."

Once the two were on board, they walked over to where Rachel was sleeping, and it was then when Ione sat down next to Rachel, woke her up by poking her in the shoulder, and asked, "How are you doing?"

"Never better," Rachel replied sarcastically, before turning over on her side so that she could go back to sleep.

Seeing that Rachel was trying to ignore them, Ione got closer, and said, "Ryan told us what happened. I know they won't listen, but, what do you want to do?"

"She wants to fight," Peter responded for Rachel, the same thing he had been telling his wife for the last few hours.

It was then that Megan, who overheard the conversation, entered the plane the same way the Albanys did, and added, "So do I, we all do."

Ione got off the seat and headed over to the rear boarding ramp when Rachel looked at everyone else in the plane, and said, "I don't think four of us is quite enough."

"Well, then, how many do we need?" Ione asked from the rear boarding ramp.

Rachel looked up, and asked, "What are you talking about?"

After Ione signaled to Rachel to come to the rear boarding ramp, Rachel got off her makeshift bed and headed over to where Ione was standing. Once she was outside the plane, she noticed that Ryan, Sabu, and twenty other people had gathered and headed together towards the plane.

Rachel stood at the foot of the rear boarding ramp as Ryan, Sabu, and their followers stopped right next to the plane, and Ryan said, "They were never going to believe you."

"I appreciate the support," Rachel sarcastically responded to what she viewed as Ryan trying to cheer her up.

Seeing that Rachel did not bring her guard down when he brought all of these people to support her, Ryan stepped forward, and said, "But, I do, I believe you."

Rachel was in complete shock when she heard Ryan say that he actually believed her, she stood completely still as Ryan pointed to the people behind him, and continued saying, "We'd like to volunteer."

Tears began to form around Rachel's eyes as Ryan pointed at his followers, and said, "Some of us, most of us, we've all done terrible things in the name of the Resistance."

Ryan turned around and pointed at Randy Bouchie, a brown haired man who was also the younger brother of John Bouchie, the man whom Rachel kicked in the groin, and said, "Spies."

"Saboteurs," Ryan said as he pointed towards a dark haired male and female, Min Jun and Ji Yeon Park.

"Assassins," Ryan said as he pointed towards a redheaded woman with a rugged appearance, Samantha North.

As Ryan began to speak about his own experience, in a way, he began to describe his follower's thoughts when he stated, "Everything I did, I did for the Resistance. And, every time I walked away from something I wanted to forget, I told myself it was for a cause that I believed in. A cause that was worth it. Without that, we're lost; everything we've done would have been in vain. I couldn't look myself in the mirror if I stopped now."

As Rachel sucked on her lips and tried to stop herself from crying, Ryan continued saying, "None of us could."

Unsure if this was the appropriate time to speak, Megan carefully entered the conversation, and said, "Even with all of our equipment, there should be enough room in the plane for all of us, we can go."

"Alright, it's a go. Grab anything that's not nailed to the floor. Go, go, go!" Ryan told his followers, instructing them to gather all of the weapons and explosives they could get their hands on.

As the followers Ryan amassed spread out to gather weapons from across the Resistance base, Sabu stood still until it was just him facing Rachel, and said, "Rachel, I'll be there for you."

Rachel smiled in return, even after Sabu added, "Ryan said I had to."

As Sabu left to find supplies for the mission, Rachel turned around to face Ryan, and asked him, "So, I guess you barely realized that I was telling the truth?"

"I had the plane refueled a few hours ago," Ryan responded, letting Rachel know that he believed she was telling the truth about the "Daughter of Sin" for a longer time than she originally thought.

Around half an hour later, the new crew had gathered all of the supplies they could find and were ready to go. While some of the members had already gotten on board the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, others got on board right before their commanding officers got on board. Rachel and Ryan were the last two to get on board as Ryan was busy sending private messages to members of other Resistance Branches who would be sympathetic and would join in the fight, even without the authorization of their commanders. However, when they walked up the rear boarding ramp, all of the Resistance fighters Ryan had recruited stood up and looked at them for guidance.

As Ryan walked passed Rachel and the new crew to get to the cockpit, Rachel repeated what Secretary Rogers told her before she left Chappaqua, telling her troops, "Save Democracy, save the American Dream."

Everyone around her, including Peter and Ione cheered when Rachel said those words. The rear boarding ramp had just closed behind her, and Rachel decided to head over to the cockpit where the rest of the crew was. Peter followed her into the cockpit and offered to help fly the plane as he had some experience flying planes, He had never flown a plane this huge, but he thought this could be an opportunity to give one of the previous pilots a break.

When Rachel and Peter made it to the cockpit, they found Megan scrambling around in order to get the plane started, until a Resistance air traffic controller came through the plane's intercom, and said, "Cargo shuttle, read back please. What's going on out there? That plane's off limits, no one's supposed to be on board until further instructions."

As Peter sat down in the co-pilot's chair, and Rachel stood behind Megan, the former UST cargo pilot grabbed a hold of the aviation headset, and nervously responded, "Yes, yes, we are, affirmative."

"It's an impounded UST cargo plane, what's your call sign pilot?" The air traffic controller angrily asked.

Unsure about what to do next, Megan simply responded, "Um..."

"Come on, we have to go," Rachel told Megan.

This didn't help Megan, as the stress confused her even more, resulting in her responding, "It's um..."

"Say something, come on," Rachel replied as she started to go through her pockets.

Still unsure about what to say, Megan replied, "You see, it's, umm..."

It was at this point that Rachel had grown frustrated with Megan, she crunched up paper she had in her right pocket into a ball and threw it at Megan, as she quietly screamed, "Come on, you idiot, say something!"

The ball of paper immediately caught Megan's attention; she picked it up from the floor and opened it up to see what it said. It was a newspaper article, the same newspaper article that Secretary Rogers gave Rachel back in Chappaqua. The paper had some water stains it received from the rain in Royal Woods, but Megan could still make out the name of the top story, "Southern California Twins Revealed Being Engaged In Forbidden Relationship Arrested." It was then that Megan realized what she would say.

"Twin," Megan replied as she looked at Rachel, and said the word in a tone that made it sound like a question.

Rachel's face displayed complete bewilderment with the response as Megan gained confidence, and said in a straight-forward tone, "Twin One."

"Twin One? There is no Twin One!" The air traffic controller responded.

Peter pressed the button to speak to the air traffic controller using the plane's microphone, not the aviation headset, and simply responded, "Well, there is now."

Rachel's surprised face turned into a smile when she realized she threw the article Secretary Rogers gave her as Megan pressed the button that Peter pressed in order to be able to speak with the air traffic controller through the aviation headset again, and said, "Twin One, pulling away."

"Pulling away," Peter replied as he helped align the plane on the runway for takeoff.

Everyone on the runway ran back towards the main building as the massive Boeing C-17 Globemaster III began to back up so that it would have enough time and energy to take off. This helped Megan and Peter a lot as it made it easier to take off from such a relatively small field. As expected, the plane gained speed as it ran down the runway and eventually took off once it reached the end. Once in the air, the last person from the base to see the plane was a century guard on watch from his station on the top of a tower on the outskirts of the headquarters, just like he had the day before with the previous plane. The century guard even saw as the plane turn to the left in order to start heading eastward.

A few minutes later, the intelligence gatherer Buffy Summers was busy responding to a few messages she sent out to other Resistance branches. She had intercepted the messages that Ryan had sent out, and when she read them and learned that he was asking others to go behind their commanding officer's backs, she sent her own messages to figure out where every branch stood on the matter. While some branches like the Saint Louis and Louisville branches replied that no one was leaving to fight, other branches like the Portland and Richmond branches replied that they had members who were going to fight, a decision that was causing a lot of conflict in Resistance bases across the country. It was then that Buffy took off her headphones and ran to the center of the room where the leadership was. Jeffrey Petersen, along with Zack Wehrenberg, Alex Vasquez, Samantha Hale, and Clover Baker were all having a web call with Tim Marino, the leader of the delegation of diplomats from New York City's Resistance branch, about the fate of the Resistance if they could not shut down the UST's nuclear arsenal.

As a Resistance member, Commander Pickles, left the meeting, the blonde intelligence gatherer rushed into the meeting, screaming, "Chairman Petersen, Petersen!"

Seeing that Buffy was not slowing down, Clover Baker put her arms out to stop the blonde intelligence gatherer, and told her, "Stop right there, private."

However, Jeffrey turned to Clover, and simply told her, "Let her speak."

Buffy calmed down after being stopped in the middle of a sprint, and said to Jeffrey, "I intercepted a message sent out by Captain Rodriguez, he's taking a group of fighters to Palm Beach and he's asking other Resistance members to do the same."

Even though Jeffrey replied had a confused look on his face for a while, he used his leadership skills to wipe it off his face, and respond, "Then, I need to speak to Colonel Shortman."

"That's the thing, he's prepping his planes, and it's not just Seattle. San Francisco, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, New York City, Hartford, Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond, Atlanta, Miami, they're all going to fight," Buffy responded, listing all of the other Resistance branches that responded to her message by saying that some of their fighters were preparing to fight.

Disturbed by this new information, Jeffrey turned to Tim, and said, "Mister Marino, my apologies, but an issue that requires my attention has arisen. We'll have to continue our discussion later."

"I understand, good luck, Chairman Petersen," Tim immediately responded, ending the web call from his line.

Now that he was open to focus on this new problem, Jeffrey returned to face the blonde intelligence gatherer, and asked, "Buffy?"

"Yes, Chairman Petersen," Buffy replied.

"I want you to send a message to every other branch of the Resistance, let them know that I'm authorizing my forces to attack. More must do the same," Jeffrey ordered.

"Of course, Chairman, I'll do it right away," Buffy responded before running back to her station.

Jeffrey dismissed Alex, Sam, and Clover, but he kept Zack around as he was the closest to him ideologically, and told him, "It seems the time for all-out war has come."

"Yes, I agree, but now, you guys need to figure out our strategy," Zack responded as they moved away from the departing Alex, Sam, and Clover.

As the two were now standing alone as rings of busy intelligence gatherers surrounded them, Jeffrey said, "If Captain Rodriguez and his team can capture the virus, we'll need him, or whoever makes it out alive, to deliver it to a secure location. The UST will be tracking them once they leave Palm Beach, we can't risk them being tracked to a Resistance base. We're going to need someone on the East Coast to hold onto the virus until we can go over there and retrieve it, but who?"

After giving it some thought, Zack thought of one person who could help them, blurting out, "My aunt."

"The blind one?" Jeffrey replied in the form of a question as he had reservations on how effective she would be considering a previous encounter the LA branch of the Resistance had with her.

Aware of the previous encounter, Zack defended his aunt, saying, "She raised me well after my parents were killed, and she's been living in hiding in Western Massachusetts ever since Thump's purge of the disabled. Yes, she'll do."

As Zack headed out of the briefing room, Jeffrey slowly turned as he said, "We will need someone we can trust."

" _I_ would trust her with my life," Zack responded, emphasizing the "I" in his response.

Zack then made his way out of the room entirely and headed over to the hangar so he could borrow a plane to fly to his aunt's house in Massachusetts. As he watched his head of the cyber-warfare department leave the room, Jeffrey turned his head away from the path his friend took and faced the wall a couple of yards in front of him. All that he had worked to achieve over the last year, all the time and lives spent, would be put to the test. Even though he wasn't sure if the Resistance was ready, he always knew that the day would come when the Resistance would strike.


	26. Welcome To Twin One

Once the word had gotten out that Ryan Rodriguez had assembled a team of Resistance fighters in LA in order to infiltrate and steal UST military secrets from Thump's personal home, Mer-A-Lac, Resistance members across the country began to do the same. Small bands of brave Resistance fighters began to organize in order support Ryan's cause in every single Resistance base, an act that was causing a lot of turmoil, especially in the more conservative branches that were concerned with the ramifications of such an attack. Luckily, when the other Resistance Chairmen received Jeffrey's message they realized that no matter what a battle was going to take place. That's when the Chairmen put an end to any of the fights taking place within their bases and ordered three-fourths of their Air Force and one-half of their troops to prepare for battle.

"Attention, all air and land personnel, report to your commanding officers immediately," Said the Seattle Branch's Chairman, Dr. Miles Shortman, a tall man with light skin in his fifties, through the intercom as his son, Arnold, prepared to lead his squadron into battle alongside his childhood friend, Gerald Johanssen, a young black man with a dark hi-top fade.

"All air and land personnel, please report to your commanding officers immediately," Repeated the Detroit Branch's Chairman and the father of Beatrix, the coder who was murdered by Anthony's Deplorable Guards durring his visit to Station Four, Bumper Yates Sr., a round, middle aged man with dark skin and long brown hair.

"You have been redirected to Palm Beach," Chairman Yates continued as Detroit's Loud Squadron Leader, Master Sergeant Bobby Santiago Jr., kissed his girlfriend goodbye. All the while in the background a beautiful, tall blonde girl with white rimmed sunglasses on top of her head took care of her younger sisters, a girl dressed in black and long black hair that covered her eyes, a pair of blonde twins with opposing personalities, a young girl with messy brown hair, dressed in a green sweater big, round black glasses and a notebook and pen in hand, and an infant with blonde hair. At the same time some other sisters, one with short brown hair dressed in a purple shirt with a white skull and the other also having brown hair but dressed in a red jersey and shorts, pulled a fuel hose over to Master Sergeant Santiago's F-16 Fighting Falcon. As they reached the fighter jet, they called on their two other siblings, a girl with brown hair pulled back in a pony tail and dressed in a yellow skirt and white sleeveless shirt with a pink squirt flower on the side and a boy with platinum blond hair dressed in blue pants and an orange polo shirt, to come and attach the nozzle of the fuel hose to the jet. The girl and boy left the boy's friend, a young black boy with dark curly hair and glasses dressed in a blue and yellowish-green horizontal striped polo shirt with a white colar, at a desk where the three were coming up with the next edition of the popular Resistance comic strip _Luan Out Loud_. When the two siblings got close to the jet, the girl with her brown hair in a pony tail grabbed her platinum blond haired brother by the hips and held him up to the top of the jet so that he could attach the nozzle and refuel the jet for the journey to Florida.

"Squadron Leaders, you'll be briefed by Colonel Arnold Shortman of Seattle's Football Squadron en route," Chairman Jeffrey Petersen said as his troops prepared for battle.

And as the fighter jets from the Resistance's LA branch moved onto the runway in order to head off to the battle, Sergeant Major Susie Carmichael, turned over to face Command Sergeant Major Pickles, and asked, "Palm Beach, they're going to Palm Beach?! Why don't we ever get the cool missions, Tommy?"

"Huh, how should I know," Command Sergeant Major Pickles replied while his best friend, First Sergeant Chuckie Finster and fellow Resistance fighters from Charlottesville, Virginia, Sergeant Chip Dyer, a tall, young man with fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes, and Corporal Katie Shiska, a slim young woman with fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, stood right next to him.

While the rest of the Resistance was preparing for battle, Twin One was already in the air and on their way to Mer-A-Lac. Creating Twin One was not an easy feat; Ryan had to go through a series of Resistance fighters who turned him down in order to find the ones who would stand next to him and his group. This mission wasn't just complicated because he had to keep Jeffrey from discovering his plan, but because it revealed to Ryan which one of his compatriots were willing to trust his judgment and go off with him on the most dangerous mission anyone of them had ever gone on. However, when enough people agreed to join Ryan, he knew that their courage to step up to the plate in this desperate hour would show itself on the battlefield. Apart from the six people who had flown across the country and back the previous day, there were twenty Resistance fighters sitting in the cargo bay of the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III waiting nervously to arrive in Palm Beach.

Corporal Samantha North, or Sam as everyone called her, was the bravest member of Twin One. The twenty-nine year old redhead had been a risk taker since she was born. She had slight scars all over her body from injuries sustained during her youth, such as a burn mark on her right arm she received after pulling on a lampshade and bringing the entire lamp down on her, causing the hot light bulb to burn her skin. As she grew up, she progressed from cutting her chin after falling off the dinner table she climbed up on to breaking her arm after falling off the outdoor pull up bar when she was trying to show off in PE. Nevertheless, what didn't kill her seemed to make Sam stronger as she always came back to what injured her once she was healed, she would even engage in other dangerous acts when she was recuperating from a previous injury. It was this fearless attitude that made Sam one of the greatest fighters in the Resistance and also the first person to volunteer herself for Ryan's mission to Palm Beach. Sam was also accompanied by her reluctant husband, Private Frederick Gast. The man who simply went by Freddie had light skin, freckles, brown eyes, and a dirty blond Jew-fro. Freddie had developed bags under his eyes after years of not receiving enough sleep. His anxiety made it hard for him to get enough sleep as he spent most nights obsessing about all of the "dangers" of the outside world; dangers that ranged from oatmeal that could eat you when he was a toddler to criminals running amuck at night when he was an adult. The only reason he was even a part of the Resistance was because his wife, Sam, had dragged him into the movement when she first got involved.

Private First Class Kai and Private Second Class Kya Baluyut were a pair of twins born in Manila who immigrated to the US when they were two years old. The two dark haired, dark skinned, and small dark eyed twins lived with their older siblings, mother, and extended family in the town of Yucaipa, California for the rest of their lives, that was until Thump came on the scene. On Monday, March 27, 2017, the first wave of deportations began with a branch of Deplorables known as the Deportation Force raiding people's homes. Even though their family had immigrated legally, their dark skin and short stature made them stick out as targets to the Deportation Force. The entire family kicked and screamed that just because they looked like the Deportation Force's targets that didn't mean that they were undocumented, but it didn't matter as they were put in the back of a prisoner transport vehicle with other people the Deportation Force had captured. The family spent the next few weeks in the Joel Arpaia Deportation Center, a detention facility in the San Bernardino County desert town of Adelanto named after the infamous racist Sheriff from Arizona's Maricopa County, until Ryan Rodriguez and a group of fighters mostly from the young LA Resistance cell broke in and helped liberate the wrongfully detained inmates. After being freed, most of the detainees, including the Baluyut twins, went with these fighters, expanding the numbers of the growing Resistance.

First Sergeant John and Sergeant First Class Randy Bouchie were a pair of brown-haired brothers that often went on risky missions. Both brothers were well over six feet tall, weighted over 200 pounds, and were trained wrestlers, making them perfect for hand-to-hand combat. Originally from West Newbury, Massachusetts, the Bouchie brothers transferred from the Boston Branch of the Resistance to the LA Branch the previous year. They relocated to LA alongside another Massachusetts native, Private Hazel Levine. The blonde-haired girl was the member of Twin One that best represented the division between Wendy Rogers and the Resistance. Hazel had a history of breaking the rules in order to get a message across, at the age of sixteen she had been arrested for her participation in a protest. Her outlook on life and politics didn't change for the next decade, that was until Independent Vermont Senator Barney Saunders launched his bid for President. Saunders raised many of the issues close to Hazel's heart, so she vehemently supported him throughout the primary. However, Saunders lost the primary to Rogers, and when Saunders tried to persuade his supporters to support Rogers, the woman he tarnished on the campaign trail, many supporters like Hazel turned on Saunders. Hazel even called him a "Democrat," an insult in her mind, afterwards. She eventually calmed down and fell in love with Saunders again; however, this devotion did not transfer to Rogers. Like some of Saunders' supporters, she didn't vote in the 2016 election, and early next morning, Thump had been declared the winner. While she was disturbed by Thump's victory, she thought that she would be disgusted with the results either way. However, after Thump became president and Kabadaian's Purge destroyed the old order, she began to question her decision. Her vote wouldn't have made a difference since Rogers swept through Massachusetts, winning every county with fifty percent or more of the vote, however, her choice of sitting the election out did have an effect in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The fact that she participated in a movement that helped Thump get elected, and in turn create the UST, brought great shame upon her. She did not like Rogers because she fell for a series of lies spread about her during the campaign; however she knew she had to atone for her transgressions, and she found that atonement in the Resistance.

Another group of transfers to the LA branch were Corporal Violet Cochran, Specialist Tom Daniels, and Private Jessica Carmichael. Violet Cochran was a young woman with light skin, blue eyes, and black hair that ran halfway down her back with bangs that covered her forehead. She was transferred from the Detroit branch to the LA branch after the Detroit branch's current Air Force Master Sergeant, Bobby Santiago, decided to transfer to Detroit from LA to be with close friends. Violet specifically chose the LA branch since she had worked with some of its members such as Bobby during a rescue mission in Michigan. Tom Daniels, a tall, blue eyed, brown haired white man, and Jessica Carmichael, a black woman with long brown hair, had an interesting story behind them. The two met about a decade before when Tom, a young repairman who was studying to be an engineer, came over to fix a broken washing machine that belonged to a man named Jerry. Jerry, a striving musician, took to the repairman immediately after first meeting him, and so did Tom. The two candidly spoke about their sexuality, with Jerry saying that he was attracted to men and Tom saying he was attracted to all sexes, and by the time Tom fixed the washing machine the two were well versed on each other's sexual preferences. Since Tom had spent hours fixing the washing machine Jerry offered to make him lunch, he said that it was to thank him for his hard work but it was actually an unconscious ruse to keep Tom from going. Jerry began to prepare lunch while Tom was in the bathroom washing up; however he was shocked to see that Tom taken off his work shirt when he reentered the kitchen, wearing the black v-neck shirt he wore under. Tom was delighted with the smell of the cooking food, and when Jerry told him that it would take some time for the lunch to be ready, Tom made his move and put his hands on Jerry's hips. Surprisingly, Jerry did not take Tom's move as a violation of his space; instead he welcomed it as it was something that was floating in his mind since meeting Tom. The touching evolved into kissing, and the kissing eventually turned into full on sex in Jerry's kitchen. This encounter became a relationship that matured over the years so much that it was able to withstand a shake-up that had ended countless relations before. In 2013, Jerry came out to his boyfriend as being transgender, and instead of ending the relationship then and there; Tom told Jerry that he was glad "she" told him. Over the next month, Jerry began to transition, changing her name to Jessica and getting married to Tom after legally changing her sex about a year before same sex marriage was recognized nationally. The pair supported Wendy Rogers during her presidential run, hoping to flip their home state of Georgia blue, just like Wendy's husband, President Will Rogers, did back in 1992. While Rogers still received more votes than former President Oyama in 2008 and 2012, Thump still won the state by five percent. With the rise of Thump came the rise of hate, especially in the south, and as a black trans woman, Jessica bore much of the brunt. Even though they were enlisted in Atlanta's Resistance branch, the socially conservative culture loomed over the branch was not as inviting. Things got so bad that Jessica's cousin, Sergeant Major Susie Carmichael, had an important team of Resistance fighters go to Georgia and bring the couple to LA where it was safer. Once the pair was in California, Tom and Jessica repaid Susie and the team by putting their skills to good use in the Resistance's LA branch.

The remaining members of Twin One were all from the LA area and were some of the earliest members of the Resistance's LA branch. Privates Savannah and Samaya Green were a pair of sisters with dark skin, dark eyes, and curly black hair who joined the Resistance early on. The Green sisters experienced a lot of discrimination after the rise of Thump just for being Black, thus they chose to join the Resistance as an act of defiance to all those who harassed them. Corporal Gloria Sussman was a young woman with light skin, green eyes, and light blonde hair. She was a brave fighter in the Resistance, although she could be a bit of a bully from time to time. Gloria picked up this trait as she liked to emulate her older sister, Prudence, whom often terrorized kids at the playground when she was a toddler. Another Resistance fighter with a complicated childhood was Staff Sergeant Alexander Jasper, or Ace for short. Ace was a muscular man in his early thirties with fair skin, red hair, and green eyes. In his teenage years he had the reputation of being a "bad boy" and often bullied his peers. However, unlike Gloria who bullied her peers because she wanted to be like her older sister, Ace's bullying was a way of lashing out. He had lost his mother in a car crash when he was really young and was raised by his stern father. Luckily, Ace calmed down and learned to be a part of a team when he joined the Resistance, putting his fighting skills to good use.

The Resistance was like a second home to many young misfits who had difficult relationships with their families, one of these misfits was Specialist Hannah Parkerson. Hannah was a young half-English half-Korean woman with dark black hair and green eyes. She was a photographer who lent her talents to the Resistance in order to document the atrocities being committed by the Deplorables. While her father supported her dream to be a professional photographer her mother and older sister were very judgmental when it came to her career choice. Hannah's resentment of her mother and sister drove her to the Resistance since many of the members of the local branches were young were also trying to find their way in the world. Luckily for Hannah, she managed to make amends with her family during a mission with a team from the Resistance's LA branch where she learned that their concerns about her life choices came from a place of love. Private First Class Min Jun Park was another member of Twin One with a complicated childhood. The young man with short black hair and small dark eyes immigrated from Busan to LA when he was just a kid with his aunt and uncle. His mother was an alcoholic who constantly neglected him as an infant, leaving him to be mostly raised by his paternal Grandmother or his aunt, his father's sister. Even though his father was not as abusive as his mother, he was still not a good influence on the young boy and his siblings. When his parents got into a huge fight, Min Jun and his siblings found refuge with their aunt and uncle and after going back and forward from their parents to their relatives Min Jun was adopted by his aunt and uncle, he even took on his uncle's surname. Unfortunately, Min Jun's siblings stayed with their parents so they did not initially come with Min Jun when he emigrated from South Korea. While Min Jun's siblings were eventually adopted by and immigrated to live with Min Jun's aunt and uncle, the boy had grown attached to his cousin, Private Ji Yeon Park. Even though she was the daughter of her aunt and uncle, Min Jun viewed her as his sister as he was by her side when they first came to the US. The two of them grew up speaking better English than Min Jun's siblings who immigrated later on, and thus felt more connected to their new home country, but when Thump came to power they asked themselves if they should try to escape the country and return to South Korea. As Americans, they chose not to leave as the US was their home and they knew they had to defend it, and as Koreans, they knew too well that if Thump was not brought down he would continue to drive the nation down a path similar to that of the nation North of the Korean De-Militarized Zone. Luckily, the opportunity arose for Min Jun and Ji Yeon to fight back when they learned about the Resistance, and once they joined they participated in a series of missions across California, helping citizens rise from the ashes created by Thump and the Deplorables.

Another member of Twin One who had a complicated relationship with his family was Private First Class Aaron Thompson Wilcox. The young man had light skin, blue eyes, and dyed neon ice blue hair, an aesthetic choice that reflected his struggle to become an independent. Aaron grew up in a very religious household, something that made it virtually impossible for him to come out as Gay to his parents. He eventually came out to his parents on his fourteenth birthday and as he predicted they were furious. The Wilcoxs sent their son to Gay conversion therapy, an action that was so traumatizing that it forced Aaron to move in with his older cousin four years before he became an adult. It would've been one thing for Aaron's parents to have written him off, however, having their son leave them only made them angrier. While they didn't fight to get their son back as they seemed to be glad that they got rid of him, their hatred of the LGBT community only increased. Things only got even more extreme for the Wilcoxs when Thump announced his candidacy, and like most Evangelical voters they immediately latched onto the rowdy Presidential candidate. It was at this moment that Aaron learned how hypocritical his parents really were. They disowned their son for being Gay but they made excuses or dismissed the fact that the godless heathen Ronald Thump had a record of cheating on his wives with younger women, delighted in mistreating the poor, and even said that he never asked God for forgiveness. It was because of this hypocrisy that Aaron rushed to the Resistance as soon as he learned about a way to stand up for what was right.

The last two members of Twin One had a particularly interesting backstory, one that connected them to the very name of the team they were a part of. Sergeant Dana McTavish, or McT as he preferred to be called since his first name sounded too feminine despite the fact it was unisex, was a young black man with spiked curly brown hair. The other was Corporal Jamie Figueroa, a young man with olive skin, dark slanted eyes, and thick long black hair that stretched down to his shoulders. What was interesting about these two was the fact that in their tween and teen years they were mutual friends of a boy who would grow up to become a footnote in the history of the struggle against Thump, Phillip DeVille. McT and Jamie both met Phil in Middle School and they usually hung out with him when he wasn't with the friends he had going back to his infancy. The two especially remembered Phil's twelfth birthday party when McT uploaded embarrassing pictures of Lil, Phil's twin sister, and her friends as a prank his friend had engineered. As expected, Lil and her friends did not take being humiliated around the world that well. In response, they took advantage of the fact that one of the DeVille's friends, Tommy's younger brother, Dil, was telling everyone he was becoming a vampire after receiving a series of mysterious bites on his neck, bites that Lil and her friends immediately identified as flea bites Dil got by using his dog as a pillow, and used him in their revenge plot. As it turned out, there was a bat in the DeVille's attic that the girls captured and released into the tent Phil and his friends were camping in the backyard in after Dil arrived and asked to enter. Phil and his friends immediately freaked out at the sight of a bat that their young minds though was Dil in his Vampire Bat form inside the tent with them, leading them to flip the tent in terror and run outside in panic. Once they were outside the tent Lil's friends laughed at them as Lil's best friend, Kimi, turned on the sprinklers, causing Phil and his friends to get all wet and run for cover. Kimi joined up with the rest of her group as they were all basking in the glory of their revenge plot, that was until Phil grabbed the water hose and sprayed Lil and her friends in return. It was all fun and games until Phil sprayed one of his friends, Chuckie, causing him to slip and fall on the ground. When the two DeVille twins got down to help Chuckie back up they got into another one of their trademark fights over who was responsible for what had just transpired, leading to the two of them to drop Chuckie back to the ground without even noticing. As the party's hosts broke into an argument their guests began to depart the _war zone_ after Wally, one of Lil's closest friends, said that she was going to call her mom to pick her up.

Even though McT and Jamie both left the party as a negative energy surrounded their friend and his twin sister, the next time they saw their friend, Phil seemed to have not just made up with Lil but he seemed to be much more attached to her. However, the same could not be said about Lil in respect to her twin brother. Both McT and Jamie felt these kinds of vibes coming from Phil up until the last day they saw him, two weeks before he and Lil died in a car accident. The loss of a good friend really hurt both men, but they eventually accepted his passing and moved on with their lives. Things were normal for the two of them until Thump became President and Kabadaian's Purge eliminated the checks and balances, and just like tens of millions of people, they experienced violent discrimination from the Deplorables simply for the fact that they weren't White. However, what really set McT and Jamie over the top was when the Thumpaganda machine used their friend's name in one of their news stories. The two followed the months long story about how Supreme Commander Kabadaian had discovered that their friend had not died but in fact faked his and his twin sister's death in order so that the two of them could live in hiding as lovers and give birth to a pair of twins of their very own. McT and Jamie were not as disturbed with the content of the story as much as they were by the fact that the UST was using their deceased friend for their own political gains. The two of them came to the decision that the majority of the country eventually reached way after they originally did; the UST fabricated the attention-grabbing story in order to distract the people from the horrendous atrocities they were committing. After the story broke, both McT and Jamie were approached by a member of the Resistance that believed the story and was trying to gather information in order to prove it true. They told her that Phil and Lil had an occasionally tumultuous, but overall great sibling and twin relationship, but nothing more "intimate" as Jamie put it, everything else she heard was pure fiction. In the end, the two had not managed to convince the Resistance member that the story wasn't true, but after they saved her from a run-in with a group of Deplorables following their interview with her, both McT and Jamie returned to the LA branch's Resistance base with her and enlisted in the cause. While they had a personal stake in whether or not Thump and the UST remained in power, one of the reasons why they joined the Resistance was to strike back at those who they viewed as having smeared Phil's name.

Twin One was in fact a truly diverse team of Resistance fighters; both men and women compromised the group, along with members of various races, ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations. While Thump, the Deplorables, and the greater UST saw this diversity as a weakness, the Resistance saw this as their strength. Each member brought a skill that when combined would create a force that could win. From the Bouchie brother's physical strength to Tom Daniels engineering skills and Hazel's hope for a better world to McT and Jamie's dedication to their deceased friend, the group as a whole truly represented what they knew their nation was. Each member had their own reason for being there, but they all agreed that being a part of Twin One was the only way to bring the change they were fighting for.


	27. The Battle Begins

After a five hour flight across the country, crossing areas that were heavily pro-Thump like central Texas, along with other areas like a swath of southern Louisiana controlled by the Resistance-allied Pretieux family, the Twin One team had finally made it to Palm Beach, Florida. The long trip meant that the team had burnt through most of the fuel in the tank of the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, meaning that they expected to have to refuel at the Resistance base of the Miami branch on their way back. Right across the mainland was the Atlantic Ocean, being patrolled by Coast Guard ships and UST Navy Cruiser and Destroyer ships as Thump's own properties were of the upmost importance for the government.

As Megan got closer to Palm Beach, Ryan pointed to a beach house next to the ocean, and asked, "The building over there on the coast, is that it?"

"Yeah, that's the famed Mer-A-Lac. Thump keeps a lot of stuff in there. If the virus is anywhere, it's going to be there," Megan responded.

"Okay, we're here. There's an anti-aircraft defense system protecting the entire base, however this plane does have an access code that should allow us to land," Megan said as she prepared to communicate with the control tower down below.

Peter had some reservations about how Megan's scenario would play out in reality, and added, "Assuming the UST hasn't already updated their access codes."

"And if they have?" Rachel nervously asked as she stood behind the pilot and co-pilot chairs.

Since there was no way to sugar coat the reality of how dangerous communicating with the UST from a stolen plane was, Megan took a deep breath, and responded, "Then they release a squadron of fighters or use the anti-aircraft weapons on us, destroying this plane and us in a blazing inferno."

Rachel was so taken aback by Megan's graphic description that she looked as if she had the hiccups as Ryan turned to her, and told her before heading down to the cargo bay, "Uh, I'll tell the others."

Rachel followed Ryan down to the cargo bay as Megan finished setting up the connection between them and the control tower, and said, "Okay, here goes."

"This is Cargo Shuttle SBE-0331 requesting a runway for landing," Megan said when she got in communication with the control tower.

At the opposite end of the communication was Virgil Jenkins, a Deplorable from Dixie County, Florida who used his experience of working as a flight controller at the local Cross City Airport to get the job of managing the airspace over Station Three, who replied in a southern accent, "Cargo Shuttle SBE-0331, you're not listed on our schedule."

Seeing that the flight control was following protocol, Megan grabbed a binder next to the pilot's chair, opened it, and responded, "Acknowledged, control tower, we we're rerouted here from Royal Woods, Michigan, Station Four. Our access code is D11l30n04g06n05g05r."

Peter was hovering above Megan as the two of them stood silent, that was until Virgil came back on the line, and said," Cargo Shuttle SBE-0331..."

Knowing that this was the moment when their fates would be revealed, whether or not they would be shot down, Megan and Peter embraced each other during the suspense-riddled break in Virgil's response, until Virgil came back on the line and added, "...you are cleared for landing."

"Yes!" Megan exclaimed quietly.

"Impressive," Peter added.

"Cargo Shuttle SBE-0331, you're cleared for Landing Strip 14, acknowledge please," Virgil added, informing Megan of where to land.

Once she received a designated landing area, she responded, "This is Cargo Shuttle SBE-0331, proceeding to LS 14 as instructed."

Now that it seemed that they had made it through the facility's security apparatus, Megan handed full control of the plane to Peter, someone who had never even landed such a large plane with someone else, let alone by himself, and said before heading down to the cargo bay, "Prepare to engage landing gear."

A few minutes before they were granted access to land in Station Three, Rachel and Ryan made their way down from the cockpit and into the cargo bay. Once they were in the large interior of the C-17 Globemaster III, they came across a sea of worried faces. As the team got closer and closer to their destination, the more the reality of them walking into danger began to settle in. Ryan had prepared a few words on a flashcard in order to motivate his troops, but seeing that Rachel was the reason they were heading into battle, he reasoned that they would mean for the team coming from her.

He then passed a flashcard over to Rachel, and said, "This might help you."

"Everybody, we're coming in," Ryan told the room, putting the weight of the attention all on Rachel.

For a moment Rachel stood frozen, confused about what she should do, that was until she lifted the flashcard up to her eyes, and read, "Wendy Rogers once said 'When you stumble, keep faith. And when you're knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can't or shouldn't go on.'"

The team began to nod their heads the moments Wendy Rogers' words reached their ears, but Rachel thought that it would mean a lot more if she spoke from the heart, so she lowered the flashcard, and added, "They have no idea we're coming, they have no reason to expect us. If we can make it to the ground we'll take the next chance, and the next one, on and on until we win or the chances are spent."

"The 'Daughter of Sin' virus is down there; Ryan, Sabu, and I will find them. We'll find a way to find them," Rachel assured the members of Twin One.

Now that the team was motivated and energized, Ryan jumped in and informed them of the plan he had devised, saying, "Sam, John, and Peter and Ione will each take teams of six and move east and south of the plane. Once you guys are far away plant explosives all around the base, and when I say so you light the place up. Make you twenty guys feel like twenty thousand."

"Oh, and get those Deplorables away from us," Ryan added.

"What should I do?" Megan asked Ryan after descending from the cockpit.

"Keep the plane ready for takeoff; you're our only way out of here. We'll leave four of these guys with you," Ryan ordered Megan as escaping Mer-A-Lac was vital to the mission's success.

While the plane began to make its decent Tom pointed out that while Ryan was a Captain and Sabu was a Second Lieutenant, Rachel, Peter, Ione, and Megan remained unranked. Since these four people had only been with the Resistance since the day before, they never had the opportunity to rise up the ranks of the military. However, everybody felt that they should at least have an honorary rank if they were going to follow her orders. And thus was how Twin One welcomed in new superior officers; Command Sergeant Major Peter Albany, Sergeant Major Ione Albany, Sergeant Major Megan Rimmer, and First Lieutenant Rachel Alcroft.

The giant plane had finally landed on Landing Strip 14 and came to a complete stop near a series of hangars at the southeastern edge of what used to be Palm Beach International Airport, as Virgil came on once again and said, "Cargo Shuttle SBE-0331, be prepared to be boarded by an inspection team."

Once she heard that word, Rachel, who had returned to the cockpit with Megan, asked her pilot, "Ready?

"Yes," Megan replied.

A group of two Deplorables arrived at the back end of the plane in order to board the aircraft and inspect it as usual. They stood around impatiently for about a minute before Megan pulled on a lever in the cockpit and opened the boarding ramp. As the back door began to open very slowly, the two Deplorables began to get a better view of what was inside the plane's cargo bay, and they were surprised at what they saw. The cargo bay of this Boeing C-17 Globemaster III was completely empty.

The two Deplorables boarded the plane and were met by Megan who was walking down the stairs that lead to the cockpit, and waived to the Deplorables while she said, "Hello."

Surprised at seeing a woman working as a cargo pilot as it was rare for women to work for the UST due to its misogynist policies and general disapproval for the government amongst women, Megan extended the greeting, and asked, "Hi, you're probably looking for a manifest?"

"That would be helpful," one of the Deplorables responded.

"I have it over here, follow me," Megan replied, pointing towards the cockpit.

At the same time Megan was having the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III inspected, another plane, a C-20 Gulfstream IV, was preparing to land at Station Three. Unlike the members of Twin One, this plane was on the base's schedule as it was Lieutenant Anthony Collins' plane coming in from Boston. After he got back home from the Resistance attack on Station Four in Royal Woods, Michigan and rested, Anthony made his way to Palm Beach in order to access the UST's massive data base in Thump's beach house. He wanted to know how it was that Joshua Alcroft had revealed his updates to the Nuclear Triad to the Resistance, so he was going to personally review every piece of data collected from Josh. His hope was to impress Supreme Commander Kabadaian with his findings and ultimately solidify him as the prime candidate for the position of Attorney General.

While Anthony sat in the front row of seats with his squad of Deplorable bodyguards sitting behind him as the plane prepared to land, the pilot came over the intercom, and said, "Lieutenant Collins, we've arrived at Station Three. Post Commander Schirmer has been informed of your arrival."

Back on Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, John and Randy Bouchie were moving the lifeless corpses of the two Deplorables sent to inspect the plane. Ryan had come up with a plan to lure the Deplorables to the cockpit where the rest of the members of Twin One would ambush them and neutralize them. Once Megan invited the two Deplorables up to the cockpit to supposedly check the plane's manifest for information on the unscheduled landing, the two were shot by Sam and Alex. This worked to the benefit of the members of Twin One as they needed a way to enter Mer-A-Lac without getting caught. The two dead Deplorables were stripped of their black clothes and armor so that Rachel and Ryan could wear them as a disguise. Since there were only two pairs of Deplorable uniforms, but a bigger reason would be his skin color, Sabu was restrained with a pair of handcuffs Ryan found on the plane as he was going to play the role of a prisoner being transported to the dungeon under Mer-A-Lac. This worked out well as the secret nature of the supposed prisoner transport would explain why the flight was not scheduled to arrive at Station Three if anyone asked what they were doing with Sabu in Thump's home.

As Ryan and Rachel each emerged from secluded areas of the plane after changing into the Deplorable uniforms, other members of Twin One told them inspiring things, such as when Ione approached Rachel, and said, "Good luck."

Rachel smiled as her sister in adventure wished her the luck she would definitely need. As she passed Ione, she encountered Peter whom she made sure to thank for helping fly the plane. Now that they had said spoken to everyone on board, Ryan and Rachel walked down the boarding ramp with the mask of their helmets down so a Deplorable or a UST official wouldn't be able to spot their faces, as they escorted a handcuffed Sabu. With the other Deplorables on the landing strip watching Sabu being dragged into an armored car by Ryan and Rachel, Megan watched them all from the window in the cockpit.

Once she knew that all of the Deplorables around were distracted, Megan ran over to the stairs, and screamed to the members of Twin One, "Go, go now, you're clear."

With this cue, Peter and Ione and their team, Sam and her team, and John and his team sneaked out of the boarding ramp of the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, leaving four fighters back with Megan to protect the plane. The three teams were careful not to be spotted by the Deplorables on the ground, but especially by those on the many towers located all about. In order to stay hidden, the three teams headed south towards the end of the base where there was less security. Most of houses in Palm Beach were destroyed in order to make room for Station Three, just like in Royal Woods, meaning that there was a lot of undeveloped land where homes once stood.

While the three teams of Twin One scurried towards the end of the base, Sabu said as Rachel and Ryan loaded him onto an armored car, "I'm not sure..."

"Sabu, quiet!" Rachel replied.

Ryan added a response in his family's native language, "Callate lo sico!"

(Shut your trap!)

"What?" Sabu asked as if it was nothing.

Ryan and Rachel ignored Sabu's comments as they boarded the driver's and passenger's seat respectively. Once in the armored car, Ryan drove the vehicle off of the landing strip and onto Southern Boulevard, a road that passed by Station Three and ended at Mer-A-Lac. As the armored car got onto Southern Boulevard, the three ground teams of Twin One seemed to parallel the vehicle as they too headed eastward through the debris of former houses and the tall palm trees that cover the Florida landscape. At the same time, Anthony's C-20 Gulfstream IV had finally descended on Station Three. From the main control tower similar to the one in Station Four in Royal Woods, the Post Commander of the base, Thump's former bodyguard, Director of Oval Office Operations, and Deputy Assistant, Kirt Schirmer watched as Anthony's Deplorable Guards got off the plane and protected Anthony as he made his way inside Station Three.

Back in armored car as they neared Mer-A-Lac, Ryan turned to face Rachel and Sabu, and said, "We'll need a map of Mer-A-Lac."

"Well, I'm sure there is one just lying about," Sabu replied from the back seat.

Smiling and shaking his head at his friend's comment, Ryan leaned back towards Sabu, and said, "You know what you have to do."

The drive to Mer-A-Lac was only took about thirty more seconds. When the three made it to the front driveway of Mer-A-Lac, Ryan and Rachel got out of the armored car and pulled out Sabu from the back row. The pair escorted Sabu up to the front entrance of the two story beach house with huge yards and a balcony tower where once they entered the real danger began. Ryan opened the front door and let Rachel and Sabu in before himself. Once inside, the first thing they noticed was how ornate Thump's home was. The entry way of the 1920's beach palace built by the socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post had a Spanish architectural design and a ceiling of hand stenciled Conna wood. However, virtually every other room had its own unique design. The large living room, in true Thump fashion, had a carved gold ceiling with an ornate chandelier hanging over the couch. While they made their way through the living room, Ryan, Rachel, and Sabu passed many wealthy members of Thump's exclusive Mer-A-Lac Club and UST officials protected by their Deplorable Guards, all mingling with each other before sneaking into an adjacent hallway that lead to a receptionist's office. Back on the grounds of Station Three with John Bouchie's team, Tom Daniels used his engineering knowledge to point out to the rest of his team members the best places to plant explosives in order to cause the most damage.

"You each get one, spread them out, we want them to be confused," Tom Daniels said as he handed out explosives to his other team members.

While the three teams spread around to plant explosives, a Deplorable on patrol turned to his partner, asked him, "Did you hear the rumors?"

"Yeah, there's a new secret project in Southern California and they're going to need officers," The other Deplorable replied

"I hope they make an announcement soon, it could be a good opportunity to rise up the ranks," The first Deplorable added.

Before the second Deplorable could respond Peter jumped out from behind the bushes and killed him with Erebus, causing the first Deplorable to turn around in confusion, and say, "Hey."

While Peter easily struck down the first Deplorable with a swing from Erebus, Ione was more playful when she approached another Deplorable from the back, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, "Mm...mm."

"What the hell?" The Deplorable said when he turned around, right before Ione kicked his rifle out of his hand and knocked him out with a punch to the face.

As members from the three ground teams of Twin One placed explosives all across Station Three, Anthony entered the main control tower while Post Commander Schirmer asked him, "Lieutenant Collins, what brings you to Station Three?"

Anthony took no time to inform Post Commander Schirmer of his plan to discover the truth behind the leaking of top secret information regarding the UST's nuclear program when he replied, "Joshua Alcroft. I want every phone and web call, every email, every text message, and every online search he has ever made or sent called up for inspection."

"All of it?" Post Commander Schirmer asked in awe as it would take a long time to gather all of the data from the data banks in Mer-A-Lac.

"Yes, all of it," Anthony replied.

"Get started!" He added as he turned his head over to face Post Commander Schirmer, causing him to think up a team to gather the information Anthony required.

In the receptionist's office inside Mer-A-Lac, Sabu turned around from the computer, and told Ryan and Rachel, "The computer says the server farm is right above up on the second floor, but it is protected by many Deplorables. We'll most likely be discovered and executed before we reach the door."

Not liking the odds, Ryan pulled out his walkie talkie and spoke into it, saying, "Sam, talk to me."

"We're ready, just waiting for your orders," Sam replied from the grounds of the base, informing Twin One's leader that the explosives were in place.

Since the explosives would create a diversion that would make it easier to sneak into the server farm, Ryan looked to Rachel for guidance.

After Rachel nodded her head, showing that she was for detonating the explosives, Ryan turned on the connection in the walkie talkie, and told Sam, "Light it up."

One by one, the explosives went off, killing many Deplorables in the process; they even caught the attention of Megan in the cockpit of the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, who uttered after being taken back by the explosives, "Ugh!"

Astonished by the various explosions detonating all across Station Three while everyone else in the control tower just stood back and watched in amazement, Anthony turned around to face everyone, and screamed, "Are you fuckers blind? Deploy the garrison, move!"

Now taking orders from someone who was not a permanent officer in Station Three, the UST officials and Deplorable officers inside the control tower began to scramble frantically in order respond to the attack. For the first time, Station Three's alarm system went off, alerting all officials to their posts. As Ryan, Rachel, and Sabu exited the hallway leading to the receptionist's office they stopped and witnessed tens of Deplorables running out of Mer-A-Lac with UST officials reporting to their posts and the Mer-A-Lac Club members running to find a safe place to hide. The three Twin One members watched in amazement as everyone running out of Thump's home had a surprised and frightened look on their faces as they never thought an attack would happen in Mer-A-Lac.

Back on the plane, Jamie spotted some Deplorables heading their way from the cockpit, and called out, "Deplorables!"

Megan was caught off guard by alert, and Jamie went down the stairs to tell the three other Twin One members that stayed with them, "Deplorables, Deplorables coming from the right!"

"Get in, get in," Ji Yeon said to the Green sisters so that they could get closer to the walls of the cargo bay.

Hiding next to the walls of the cargo bay worked as the low lighting hid them from the view of passing Deplorables. However, Ji Yeon and the Green sisters still held onto their rifles just in case the Deplorables spotted them through the open boarding ramp. Meanwhile, the three teams reunited by a large metal door that lead directly into the main building in Station Three. On the other side of the door was an entire company of Deplorables waiting to go into battle. While they were expecting to go out onto the grounds of the base and capture the ones responsible for the attack on their base, their plans were changed when they encountered the members of Twin One waiting for them on the other side of the door. At the first sight of Deplorables exiting the main building, Sam and John began firing on the group of paramilitaries from behind their barricade of metal crates. Once the Deplorables began to return fire Peter jumped up from the ground and used Erebus to deflect bullets while Ione and the rest of Twin One fired back.

As Deplorables began to fall at the foot of the entrance, Hannah screamed, "Fire!"

"One's on your left!" McT screamed at Aaron.

While the members of Twin One were finally putting months of preparation into action by initiating the Resistance's first official battle with the UST, Supreme Commander Kabadaian sat in the office of his mansion in Washington DC unaware of what was transpiring eight hundred and sixty miles southeast. He first learned of the attack when the General of the Deplorable Corps and an ally going back to Kabadaian's Purge, Gerald Wilson, came into his office and brought it to his attention.

"Supreme Commander, it's Station Three, they're reporting an incursion," Gerald said from the opposite side of Kabadaian's desk.

The news of another attack on a nuclear station, two in one day, severely upset the Supreme Commander, however, he dismissively replied, "God, some more delinquents. Give the assignment to Collins and Greenfield, let them figure it out, it'll make my decision much easier."

"That's the thing, Lieutenant Collins is there, in Palm Beach," Gerald responded, informing Kabadaian of Anthony's location.

It was at that moment that Kabadaian realized the importance of Mer-A-Lac, and asked Gerald, "Wait a minute, we keep blueprints of all of our projects and top secret information about our operations there?"

"We do, sir," Gerald replied.

Kabadaian then narrowed his eyes, and said to Gerald, "Inform Major Greenfield that I request his presence within the next twenty minutes. I have my own private web call to make for the time being."

Gerald then bowed his head at Kabadaian before exiting his office and prepared to summon Reggie from Station One right across from the Potomac River in Virginia. Kabadaian then took the time to think about how his secret ally was correct about an attack on Mer-A-Lac. This correct prediction only cemented Kabadaian's trust in this old ally, the ally he was going to consult with now that he had learned of the attack.


	28. Secrets Revealed

As the war broke out on the runway of the base, Ryan, Rachel, and Sabu made their way through the empty halls of Mer-A-Lac. In order to get to the server farm they had to travel up to the second floor. With every step they took on the stairs, the sounds of their footsteps echoed across the evacuated hallways, hallways that were all decorated in oil paintings of Thump. Once they got to the room that lead into the server farm, the team discovered that a Deplorable Guard stayed behind to watch the entrance. He seemed to be completely unaware of what was unraveling outside as he apathetically leaned back in his desk chair and read the latest article from the far-right conspiracy theory website _IntelBattle_ , the same one Megan's father, Ernie, was a fan of, on his phone. The three knew they had to enter carefully as to not scare the Deplorable Guard into calling for reinforcements, and that was when Ryan told the other two his plan to get in.

With Sabu still handcuffed, Ryan and Rachel escorted him to the desk where the Deplorable Guard looked up, and said, "What are you doing with a towelhead up here? The dungeon's in the basement."

"We know," Sabu slyly replied right before putting his hands together into a huge fist and hitting the Deplorable Guard on the top of his head.

Once Sabu hit him, the Deplorable Guard immediately fell to the ground where Ryan pulled out his gun and shot him, something similar that happened to the many Deplorables on the runway. Since the Deplorables were all coming out of one entrance, it was easy for the members of Twin One to shoot them down. Piles of dead Deplorables formed at the entrance of the large metal door as the Twin One fighters shot from behind a series of crates. Unfortunately, the Deplorables broke up into two teams and exited the main building from two other entry ways, outflanking the team. This was a shock to the fighters as they were now surrounded by the enemy on three sides.

"Go! Go!" Sam screamed as she ordered Ace to move back.

Even though Ace outranked Sam, he deferred to her and let her take command of their squad since she had more experience in these types of adrenaline-rush events. As the team kept moving back as the Deplorables began to encircle their location, they became much more open as targets for the enemy. Peter had to both watch his step while he allowed Erebus to guide him in order to deflect the incoming bullets. In this retreat, the Deplorables killed their first member of Twin One, Corporal Gloria Sussman. Gloria was shot in the chest by a Deplorable coming out of the main entrance and immediately fell to the floor on her back.

"No!" John Bouchie, her squad leader, screamed.

It was at this moment that John realized this fight was really real, meaning that many people he knew were not going to make it out alive. He had fought alongside these people several times in small clashes, but never in an all-out battle, and even he was not sure if they were truly ready to take on the UST. At that exact same moment, the fighters abandoned the runway and ran off into the jungle of palm trees that surrounded the base. The Deplorables began to throw grenades and firebombs into the jungle, causing the tall palm trees to catch on fire. The reckless use of explosives resulted in palm trees crashing down and forcing the fighters back onto the runway, there was simply no escape from the violence.

Sensing that her troops were frightened by the fact there was no escape from the Deplorables now; Sam flung her arm out in the air towards the main building, and screamed, "Forward, forward! We have to push them back!"

This sense of leadership was enough to get the team back into the fight. Not only did the fighters come out of the jungle, Tom and Hannah began to use the explosives they brought with them on the Deplorables. As the fighting began to spread out from the main entrance, the observers in the main control tower were trying to get reports on who the intruders were and how many there were in order to properly respond. Meanwhile, back on the C-17 Globemaster III, Megan listened to the frantic communications between the main control tower and the people on the ground through the plane's headset.

"Landing Strip 12, report in, how many do you see, we need numbers?" Specialist Gary Wilson, a communication officer with a bald head and a small beard forming around his jaw, said as he was trying to get in contact with someone on Strip 12, even though he did not know if there was really someone there.

"Strip 13, what's going on down there? Status please, all strips report in immediately," Specialist Eric Hughes, another communication officer, except he had a full head of dirty blond hair and a full moustache, said through the private line.

"Unknown, we've got Antifa's everywhere," Sergeant Alan Green, the obese pilot of the plane on Strip 13, replied, referring to the Twin One fighters by the name of the group that the Thumpaganda machine used to refer to all groups who stood up to them, a group said to be made up of violent extremists who were easy to portray as boogeymen in order to keep many parts of the country afraid of the change actors.

Sergeant Green then went on to call for the help, surprisingly calmly saying, "We're taking fire, Strip 12, Strip 14, we request assistance."

It was at this moment that Megan realized she could use the confusion and the communication officer's lack of knowledge about the people on the landing strips against them.

"This is Strip 2, Strip 2, I spotted forty Antifa's heading south on Strip 2," Megan said into the microphone in order to frighten the communication officers with such a high amount of fighters that they would send many Deplorables to an area where there were no fighters.

Megan then handed the headset over to Samaya, and said, "You, get on there, tell them you're getting ganged up by Antifas on Strip 5."

Since her squad leader told her to fool the communication officers with incorrect information about the location of fighters, Samaya screamed into the microphone, "This is Strip 5, Antifas are overriding us, please help!"

The communication officers in the control tower were being bombarded with so many claims that their superior officer, Sergeant Fred Clark, a quick-thinking man with bright blue eyes that glared through the shadow created by the brim of his cap, had to step in, put on a headset, and respond, "Strip 12, Strip 10, Strip 8, please confirm, confirm and report."

"Get reinforcements down to Strip 5 immediately," Sergeant Clark said, ordering a squadron of Deplorables to an area without any fighters, thus taking them out of the fight for a while.

This moment was particularly intriguing to Anthony as he had a good view of the runway from the windows of the control tower. He could not tell whether or not fighters were really at the strips people called in from, but his unsurety kept him from raising any questions to Post Commander Schirmer. All he could do was stand back and stroke his chin as he observed the battle from above. Meanwhile, back in the room right outside the server farm, Ryan was trying to open the door by swiping the key-card of the Deplorable Guard that he had shot.

Ryan swiped the key-card multiple times, but to no avail, causing him to scream out, "It's not working, Sabu!"

"Flip it around!" Sabu replied from the dead Deplorable Guard's desk where he sat down in order to search through his computer for information about where they were about to enter.

To Ryan's surprise, a simple flip meant that the key-card could now be read by the card reader. Once the computer recognized the people wishing to enter as having been cleared to proceed, the large metal door in front of them flung wide open. Apart from the light emanating from outside the window, at first sight the room was completely dark with only a hint of blue light shading the walls and many small green lights scattered around as the sounds of many fans running calmly in the background. However, when the door was completely open the lights immediately turned on, revealing that the lights were coming from the blade servers that grazed the walls of the server farm.

Back on the runway, the Twin One fighters were busy keeping the Deplorables back, a challenge that was only a bit winnable due to the explosives the fighters kept throwing at the Deplorables. At this time, Peter got down, behind the crates that formed their shield and took some time to catch his breath. He had been deflecting bullets with Erebus for the last ten minutes and the intense focus needed to do this drained him of his mental energy. From behind the crates, Peter put the palm of his right hand on his eyes in order to rest; however, what he felt was far from relaxing. While everyone else was busy shooting at the Deplorables, all of them but Peter were unaware of the vibrating ground and loud engine sound going off in the background. Unsure what the origin of the shaking and sound was, Peter peered across the side of the crates and spotted a heavily armored tank coming in from the left.

As Peter got up from the floor by using Erebus as a cane, he called out, "Ione, Ione!"

"What?!" His wife replied, unaware of what was going on to the left of her as she was busy shooting back at the Deplorables.

"Run!" Peter screamed, causing Ione to turn around and spot the tank coming towards them all.

Once the tank began to fire its smaller guns on the members of Twin One, the fighters immediately forgot about the raging forest fire and ran into the jungle of Palm Trees. Some of the fighters were hesitant to enter the jungle, but were forced to face their fears when Sam ordered all of the troops to enter. Even though the palm trees and other plants hid the from the Deplorables, the Tank Commanders kept on firing their tank-mounted machine guns and ordered the Tank Gunners to fire armor-piercing shells indiscriminately into the jungle, catching everyone by surprise. Ione nearly got blown up as one of the tank's projectiles landed and went off a few feet behind her only ten seconds after entering the jungle. While the situation seemed to be over on the ground, hope was about to be restored from the air. At that moment, Resistance planes from all across the country began to amass over Palm Beach. While the majority of these planes were just retrofitted jets meant to transport troops to the battlegrounds, a good amount of the aircraft were fighter jets stolen from the UST and transformed into the Resistance's Air Force.

From one of the planes, the leader of the Seattle branch's air force said through his headset, "This is Coronel Arnold Shortman of the Resistance Air Force, all squadron leaders report in."

"Coronel, this is Loud Leader, standing by," replied Master Seargent Santiago of the Detroit Branch.

"This is Rocket Leader, standing by," replied the LA branch's Major, Trevor Bowen, a tall, fair skinned man with a round head, brown eyes, and dark hair who looked eerily similar to Commander Pickles.

"This is Jackson Leader, standing by," replied Marquise Phillips, the African American Chief Master Sergeant of the Richmond branch.

As all of the other squadron leaders reported in, Ensign Andrew Morris, an officer on board the deck of one of the Navy Cruisers off the coast, the TTS Sumia, noticed the large fleet amassing, and alerted his Commander, "Sir, the leftists are preparing to attack."

Without thinking about who were in the planes, the Commander, a brown haired man named Randy Scott, called for the attention of the communication officer, and screamed, "Get me Rear Admiral Bailey, immediately!"

Back on the ground, the sound of alarms rang through Station Three, and with Post Commander Shrimler busy at his post, one of the officers, Second Lieutenant Walter Harris, a man of average height, fair skin, and dark hair, came up to Anthony in search for orders, and said, "Lieutenant, the hostile fleet, it's amassing northeast of the base."

"Lock down the base, lock down," Anthony ordered as he walked away from the windows and passed the officer.

"And engage the Anti-Aircraft Defense System?" Second Lieutenant Harris asked, even though he was sure the answer was yes.

The Sergeant's intuition was proven correct, as Anthony quickly replied, "Do it!"

Meanwhile, Coronel Shortman was busy giving orders from the air, saying, "Rocket and Jackson Squadrons, attack the destroyers. Loud Squadron, defend the transport planes and take out their AADS."

"Copy you, Coronel. Loud Squadron, on me," Master Seargent Santiago said in response.

"Copy Loud Leader," replied Loud Two, or Sergeant First Class Mindy Schoffner, a stubby brunette woman with fair skin.

"Copy Loud Leader," added Loud Three, or Staff Sergeant Fritz Thayer, a heavy set middle-aged man with fair skin, thinning hair, and a bushy mustache.

Once the rest of Loud Squadron checked in with Bobby, a large, balding middle-aged man with fair skin brown hair, Corporal Kirby Mays, or Loud Five, added, "We won't have long before they launch their own planes."

At that moment Master Seargent Santiago guided his plane and the rest of Loud Squadron towards the airstrips of Station Three where they would begin to disable the UST's anti-aircraft weapons. However, a clear problem soon arose, the Navy destroyers and cruisers and the Coast Guard cutters immediately began to fire their surface-to-air missiles and naval guns up at the planes in the air. While the Resistance did anticipate an attack by the ships off the coast, this now meant that there would be two threats to both the fighter jets and transport planes full of fighters ready to land on the ground. One by one, the planes from Loud Squadron separated from the rest of the fighter jets and headed over towards Station Three where the UST's AADS began firing at them. Most of them made it into the airspace over the base, but unfortunately the Navy ships had managed to shoot down Loud Six, destroying the plane and sending the remains to crash down on the ground. This immediately sent shocks down the spines of the Loud Squadron pilots, pushing them to begin to bombard the turrets that brought down their courageous compatriot.

The news of the Resistance attack spread all throughout the UST's network; meaning that back at Mer-A-Lac, Sabu read on the monitor of the computer he was scanning through, and said, "The Resistance Air Force has arrived, there's fighting on the beach, they've locked down the base, and they've restricted all non-fighter jet air traffic. They say that they will shoot down any plane that does not comply."

"What does that mean, are we trapped?" Rachel asked, to which Ryan nodded.

When all hope seemed lost at being able to take off on the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III they arrived in, Sabu came up with a plan on how to complete their mission, and said, "We could still hand-deliver the virus to the Resistance. We'd have to get a message up there to let them know they'd need to land on the ground in order to transfer the server. It's getting to them up in the air, that's the problem; we'll never be able to communicate with them."

Realizing that Sabu's plan was the only one they had, Ryan picked up his walkie talkie, and screamed, "Megan, Megan, can you hear me?! Megan?!"

"Yes, I'm here, we're on standby. They started fighting, the base is on lockdown," Megan replied.

Ryan then came in and informed her of their plan, saying, "I know that, listen to me, there are Resistance planes up in the air. You need to get in touch with them and let them know they need to land somewhere far from the base in order to pick up the server with the virus."

This request almost put a smile on Megan's face for being so ridiculous, leading her to respond with, "I can't do that, I'm not connected to the communications tower and I don't know on what frequency the Resistance is on. I can't just do it."

"It's the only way we're getting the virus out of here, find a way!" Ryan screamed into his walkie talkie.

Before running into the server farm room, Ryan looked over at Sabu, and said, "Cover us, okay."

Rachel was just ready to run after Ryan, but she then realized that Sabu had no weapon to protect himself, she pulled out the gun that she had stolen from "Commander Pickles," put it in front of Sabu, and said, "You'll need this."

With a confused look on his face Sabu looked down at the gun, leading Rachel to respond with, "You made such a big fuss before because you didn't get a gun."

Reminding him of his selfish actions really humbled Sabu, but nevertheless, he took the gun from Rachel's hand, and replied, "You know, my thoughts about the Jews or about Israel have not changed."

Those out-of-place words really scared Rachel now that Sabu had a firearm and could shoot her down, but things took an unexpected turn when Sabu put down the gun, and said, "However, your actions, Rachel Alcroft, are truly selfless, and for that, I am honored to bestow upon you the title, Friend."

This was truly a heartwarming moment, for the first time since meeting Rachel and Sabu seemed to have finally trusted one another; however, Rachel's smile at Sabu came to an end when Ryan ran back into the room, and screamed, "Rachel, come, I need your help!"

Back on the battlefield, the UST unleashed five tanks and a new squadron of Deplorables to hunt down the remaining insurgents who had infiltrated the base. As both the Deplorables and tanks fired their weapons into the jungle that surrounded the base, the members of Twin One kept dodging these projectiles being aimed at them. This constant running away from the enemy eventually led them to run out of the jungle where they first sought refuge and hide behind a huge metal crate. As the tanks began to fire large explosives their way, Peter's team met up with Sam's team and the two decided to fight against the same threat, in this case the wave of tanks firing at them.

Meanwhile, inside one of the tanks, the Deplorable Tank Commander ordered the Tank Gunner, a man who was not a member of the Deplorable Corps but a member of the UST Army that did not defect as he still believed in the ideology of the UST, to fire, screaming, "The Antifas are behind that crate, destroy it!"

With the sounds of the tanks growing exponentially louder as they got closer to the crate, the Twin One fighters knew they had to do something instead of running away from them. That's when Ione began to search frantically through a camouflage duffel bag containing various explosives and ended up pulling out a grenade. Without much thought, Ione walked over to the left side of the crate, pulled the firing pin out of the grenade, and hurled it at the tank. The explosive landed on top of the tank's hull and detonated a few seconds later; while the explosion did shake the vehicle and damaged one of the Tank Driver's periscopes, the tank remained virtually unaffected. This shocked the members of Twin One, especially Ione, who all expected the tank to blow up on contact with the grenade. However, this confusion soon turned into spine-tingling fear when the tank's turret began to face the crate, indicating that the Tank Gunner was ready to fire. A combination of shock and realization they could no longer outrun a shelling explosion kept the Twin One fighters in place, but as the tank was about to fire they heard the noise of planes beginning to swoop in.

Ione then looked up towards the air, and yelled to the rest of the fighters, "Look!"

The planes were in fact Detroit's Loud Squadron as they flew above, dropping a series of makeshift bombs on the five tanks, destroying them all. At the moment the bombs went off, Master Seargent Santiago smiled from his seat inside Loud One, while on the ground Ione smiled and blew a huge air kiss towards the plane of Loud Leader as the entire squadron flew away to their next location. Little did the two know that Ione was the one that saved Bobby's life by striking down a UST jet pursuing him during the Attack on Station Four in Royal Woods; and now here he was returning the favor by saving Ione.

Back on the C-17 Globemaster III, Megan emerged from the cockpit with a tool box in hand, threw it to Jamie, and told the group of four that stayed behind to guard the plane, "Get ready, you guys are going to need to go out there."

While the rest of Megan's team looked at each other in confusion, Jamie took a glance at the tool box, then looked up at Megan, and asked, "What are you doing?"

Megan then turned around to brief the entire team of the plan she had concocted, replying, "Ryan's team is close to finding the virus, but the UST has grounded all non-fighter jet air traffic, if we try to take off we'll be shot down, we're trapped down here. However, the Resistance has planes up in the air, we just have to get a message to one of them to land somewhere safe where we can hand over the server with the virus. I can only communicate with the control tower from the plane, but we can change that so that we can communicate with other recievers. In order to do that we need to reboot the parabolic antennas at the communications tower so that I can communicate to the planes in the air via this plane's cockpit. Now, I can adjust the plane's frequency from in here, but you guys are going to have to go out there and find Freddie, I talked to him and he knows how to reboot the antennas. When he reboots the antennas, I'll be able to contact the Resistance."

While the four other members of Megan's team simply stood back, trying to absorb the mission, Megan snapped and yelled, "Go!"

At the same time above the ocean, Seatle's Football Leader, Coronel Shortman, observed the effect the planes were having on the ships below, and asked his good friend, "How's it going on your end, Football Two?"

His longtime friend, Lieutenant Colonel Johanssen, who was currently engaged on the other side of the battle, replied, "We're making progress, we've just damaged the two Coast Guard cutters, they're sinking now."

"That's good, Football Two. Now, let's engage the Navy cruisers and destroyers, and let's finish their AADS," Arnold ordered every Resistance fighter jet, not just Gerald.

"Yes sir," responded Master Seargent Santiago, assuring he had received and will continue to follow through with the order to destroy the final pieces of the UST's Anti-Aircraft Defense System.

All of a sudden, planes from various different branches began to converge on the two Navy destroyers, the TTS Autumn Ater and the TTS Lil Hardt, the fair-skinned, brown haired leader of Milwaukee's Cheese Squadron, Staff Sergeant Harry Cook, came in through the communications line, and said, "We're going in."

As a mass wave of planes came swooping down and bombed the two destroyers renamed after women who filed lawsuits against Thump in order to shed light on the sexual harassment they received at the hands of the President and were then stationed off the coast of Mer-A-Lac in order to add even more insult to injury, Cheese Leader came in through the line, and said to his fellow fighters, "Stay with me."

For the most part the initial bombing run was a success; they had damaged the hulls of both destroyers and even taken out some of its weapons. Unfortunately, the TTS Autumn Ater shot back with one of their intact naval artillery gun and managed to shoot down on of Denver's Alpine Squadron's fighters, Alpine Seven. While the Resistance rained fire on the destroyers, all it took was a few shots to strike the Colorado plane and make it crash into the ocean. While the loss of a single plane was devastating to the Resistance as they did not have as many as the UST to go around, the loss of their friend only motivated the fighters to turn around and go for another bombing run.

Back in the air over Station Three, while Loud Squadron had almost destroyed every last part of the AADS, several different makeshift troop transport planes made their way over to base in order to land and supply Twin One with more fighters. These planes were small, one of the most common was the Cessna 421, the same kind that Ryan and his crew crashed in Royal Woods, except these troop transports were also modified with some defense systems. One pilot of these types of planes was a blonde woman with brown eyes and fair skin named Rosie Hall from the Resistance's Boston Branch, and she was accompanied by a very special partner. Rosie's longtime friend, Skyler Sinnott, a young woman with fair skin, brown hair and eyes sat next to the window. Skyler suffered from a series of disabilities and lacked a series of functions that others had, these disabilities left her in a wheelchair and since she could not speak she interacted with the world through a small computer mounted on her wheelchair that turned her written text into speech. While many saw this as a fact that the Resistance was so desperate that they would take anyone, both Rosie and Skyler saw this as a way to give Skyler a purpose in life. That's why while Rosie flew over the grounds of Station Three Skyler fired the machine gun that had been mounted to the Cessna 421. While the open window did create a lot of noise in the plane, Skyler was able to block it out and fire repeated shots at one of the tanks below. This constant barrage of bullets eventually overheated the tank, leading it to explode as the members of John Bouchie's team looked in amazement and cheered the passing plane among many others for their help. Meanwhile, Ryan, Rachel, and Sabu were still searching through the UST's archives, with Sabu going through the computer outside the server farm room and the two former looked for the exact server containing the "Daughter of Sin" virus.

Without looking up from the monitor, Sabu screamed to his partners in the room behind him, "The server should be on the right side of the room."

"Alright, Rachel, you take the end closer to the window, I'll take the one closer to the door," Ryan ordered, this way they could split the work looking for the specific sever.

While the two carried away looking for the server, on the outside, Sabu heard what sounded like footsteps approaching. Out of pure instinct, Sabu jumped out of his desk chair and pressed a button, closing the large metal door to the server farm room. Ryan and Rachel were both confused as to why Sabu had closed the door while at the same time Sabu slid and hid underneath the desk where the computer was stationed. Sabu's intuition ended up being confirmed as three Deplorables marched into the room and spotted the Deplorable Guard lying unconscious on the floor.

As the Deplorables began to investigate the small room in order to find out who had harmed the Deplorable Guard, Sabu stayed as quiet as possible, that was until Ryan gave out his position by contacting him through his walkie talkie, and asking," Sabu what's going on out there?"

The sound of Ryan's curious question lead a Deplorable to look behind the desk and found Sabu crouched down, to which he replied by uttering one word in Arabic, "Asif."

(Sorry)

The confused Deplorable didn't much care to figure out what Sabu was saying; he just saw a foreigner's face he wanted to shoot. Luckily, before the Deplorable could, Sabu pulled out the gun Rachel gave him and fired at the Deplorables face. This brought the Deplorable straight to the ground while at the same time Sabu got up as fast as he could and fired at the two other Deplorables before they could respond. Once all three Deplorables were on the ground, Sabu put down his guard and turned his back to their bodies while he prepared to respond to Ryan. Little did he know, one of the Deplorables was still alive and fired a shot back. This bullet didn't go through Sabu, but it did graze his right shoulder, causing him pain and making him turn back and shoot the Deplorable three more times to make sure he was dead.

Back outside, many Resistance fighter jets were in the process of sinking the remaining Navy destroyer, the TTS Lil Hardt, however, one of its machine guns was still functioning and one of the shots it fired nearly hit a member of Minneapolis' Viking Squadron, Senior Airman Lyndon Hansen, a blond haired man with fair skin, blue eyes, and a chiseled jawline, resulting in Viking Four himself shouting, "Oh, Come on!"

Over Station Three, Master Seargent Santiago came on the line to update Coronel Shortman of their status, to which he said, "Football Leader, this is Loud Leader, we're starting our last bombing run on the Anti-Aircraft Defense System."

"Keep it tight, and watch out for any enemy fire," Bobby added, advising the rest of the fighters of Loud Squadron.

After about eight bombing runs across Station Three, Loud Squadron was now ready to take out the final turret in the AADS. As the Detroit fighters approached the weapon, the AADS managed to shoot down Loud Two, in addition to shooting down Loud Four in a previous bombing run. Even after this loss, Loud Squadron went through with their bombing run, destroying the last piece of the Anti-Aircraft Defense System and making it a bit safer for planes to get closer to Station Three. However, the loss of the AADS and their loss of ships at sea resulted in the UST giving the order for every one of their fighter jets to take off from the base.

In the next minute, the sky was now saturated in UST Air Force jets, and as they spread out and many began to reach the ocean, Oddball Leader from Portland's Oddball Squadron, Staff Sergeant Sally Jennings, a slender woman with green eyes, light skin, freckles, and short red hair, alerted the rest of the Resistance planes, screaming "More fighters coming in, form up!"

As Coronel Shortman kept on dodging incoming fire from the remaining Navy ships, it took Lieutenant Colonel Johanssen to come in through the line and inform him that UST jets were coming his way, saying "Coronel, enemy fighter are coming your way!"

The massive wave of fighters disoriented Arnold but he managed to pull his plane up in order to not crash into any other plane. However, he now needed to act quickly in order to take out this new wave of enemies.

Meanwhile on the base, as Freddie made his way around with his team to the base of the parabolic antennas, Jamie came in through the walkie talkie, and said, "Freddie, Freddie, come in, are you at the antenna yet?"

"I'm almost there?" Freddie replied as he looked above and witnessed the dogfights going on between the two sides.

As Jamie and the others who stayed behind to guard the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III prepared to venture out into the battlefield, he put the walkie talkie next to his mouth, and asked, "Where are you?"

"I'm near the western side of the base, there's a huge metal door to enter the base behind us, come now," the nervous man replied, giving away his team's location.

Up in the air, now that the AADS had been destroyed Loud Squadron had one more mission, to escort the transport planes bringing Resistance fighters from across the country to the fight, this lead to Master Seargent Santiago coming through the line, and saying, "Transport planes, you're cleared to land."

He then followed up with an order for his squadron, adding, "Loud Squadron, follow my lead, we have to shield them from an air attack."

Soon after, one of these planes landed next to Peter's team, and the pilot from the LA branch, Yoshi Maruyama, a young Asian man with slightly darker skin, small dark eyes, and thick black hair from Yucaipa, turned his head around from his seat up front, and said to his passengers, "Troop reinforcements, time to go."

That's when the first fighter up front the Yucaipa native and Corporal in the Resistance's LA branch, Justin Rogers, a light skinned man with freckles and short dirty blond hair, and son of actor and President Rogers' half-brother, Clint Rogers Jr., swung open the door of the plane, and screamed as he jumped out, "For Uncle Will and Aunt Wendy!"

"And for Barnie Saunders!" Added his longtime friend, Specialist Sean Butler, another Yucaipa native with fair skin, messy brown hair, and blue eyes, as he followed him out.

Even though they were on the same side, Sean's reference of the Vermont Senator who split the Democratic party, which lead to Thump's election, was not just perceived by Justin as an attack on his country but as an attack on his family who he had just invoked as an act of remembrance after their untimely death at the hands of the UST.

That was why as they ran over to the battlefield, he turned around to face his friend, and responded, "Shut up Sean, this is serious; I don't have time for your bullshit!"

Simultaneously, back over the ocean, the Resistance's bombing of the remaining Navy cruisers was not as successful as before, resulting in the leader of Boston's Lobster Squadron, Alexis Walsh, a young woman with fair skin and brown hair, commenting, "We're having little effect on the cruiser's armor."

"How much more can that thing take?" Asked Leon Campbell, the African American leader of Atlanta's Hub Squadron.

The problem was soon turned away from the cruisers to the UST jets in the air when a plane from Rocket Squadron separated from the group, culminating in Rocket Leader asking the other pilot, "Stick close Rocket Five, where are you going?"

Rocket Five, or Senior Master Sergeant Shirley Pounder, an African American woman and former police officer in her sixties from the coastal city of Ocean Shores, California, separated from the rest of the group and then began to swirl in the air as an attempt to confuse the UST jets, but when they would not get off her tail, she immediately screamed into her headset, "There all over me I'm trying to lose them! This is Rocket Five, I need help!"

Rocket Five's call was to no avail as a UST Air Force pilot was able to shoot her down before anyone else could come to her rescue. Back in Mer-a-Lac, Ryan and Rachel were busy going through the various servers on the right side of the room. Each server also had a label written horizontally but places vertically as that's how the servers were placed on the racks.

As they both looked for the right server, which neither of them truly knew what it was labeled, Rachel's eyes focused on a wide server, and she asked Ryan, "Hey, shouldn't names on archives be written 'last-name-comma-first-name, not first-name-last-name?'"

Still searching his area, Ryan could care less about how a server was labeled if it wasn't the one they were looking for, to which he replied by stating his initial explanation for the discrepancy he came up with, "Yeah, but remember, this is Thump's house, he's probably too retarded to know that, so they just wrote it normally so he'd understand."

Without much to refute Ryan's explanation, Rachel accepted it, however she was still mesmerized by what was in the server and why it was in such a secretive place like the sever farm in Mer-A-Lac. The server was labeled "Phillip R. B. DeVille," the same name as Rachel's ex's friend and the man on the newspaper that Secretary Rogers gave Rachel which ended up naming the crew that accompanied them on this mission. Even though this server was most likely not the one they were looking for, the name on the sever was enough to entice Rachel, making her wonder how many secrets were inside. Did this server contain the truth about how the UST had manipulated the DeVille's story to their own advantage? In order to answer this question, Rachel carefully pulled the server out of its slot and took it to a computer on a desk in the left side of the room. She initially hit the space bar on the keyboard a few times before the monitor turned on, and once it was on she connected the server to the computer via a VGA and dongle cable that hung from the computer tower. Once she plugged the server into the computer and she selected the option to see what was inside, Rachel was surprised when the results did not appear on the relatively small monitor in front of her, but on larger ones mounted on three of the four walls surrounding her, forming a sort of "U" around her.

She followed the monitors and saw that virtually each one displayed a certain piece of data recorded in the server. Rachel noted how one monitor displayed video recordings, most likely video-diaries done on a webcam, of a teenage Phil. Another monitor displayed a series of audio recordings that probably came from different devices. A third one displayed a series of documents, and when she clicked on one of the files with the mouse, it revealed that they were digital scans of Phil's handwritten documents. _Love letters, impossible_ , Rachel thought after reading the one. Even though the letters did seem to confirm that Phil did have something for his twin sister, Rachel thought they could easily have been faked. She recalled a leak that revealed Thump wrote himself fan-letters from imaginary people to bolster his own fragile ego, which incidentally resulted in the firing of his first Chief-of-Staff. In order to find some more evidence to disprove the DeVille story once and for all she headed over to a monitor that displayed all of the photos that the UST had gathered. At first, the photos near the top seemed like normal photos of a young Phil by himself and others where he was with other people like Tommy. However, as Rachel scrolled down the library of photos, she made an odd discovery as the more recent photos seemed to be taken from far away, almost as if from a stake-out conducted by investigating authorities.

She eventually made her way to the end of the library where she discovered the smoking gun of this entire conspiracy; Rachel found a photo of the DeVille twins and two young children who eerily looked just like them sitting down in chairs that restrained both their arms and legs. What was special about this photo was that, unlike other images, this photo was never released by the Thumpaganda machine when it was the top story in the country. They had released many different images during the initial media frenzy and during the sham trial that condemned the DeVilles to death, many of them were violent and gorey, so it's not like the UST was trying to cover up their treatment of the twins. Perhaps Secretary Rogers was partially right when she said the people we saw being paraded by the authorities on camera were merely actors; however, the claim that the DeVille story was completely fabricated now seemed to have been proven false.

Now that Rachel came to the realization that the UST had really captured the DeVilles living a secret life of forbidden love hidden from public view, this realization only made Rachel whisper, "My God, the story is true."

While Rachel thought she was being discrete when she expressed her thoughts about the validity of the DeVille story, Ryan had actually overheard her, and unplugged the server from the main computer while he added, "Yeah, and I don't care! Get back to work; we need to find the virus."

After reprimanding Rachel for venturing off on a trivial quest, Ryan threw the server containing the truth about the DeVille's up into the air. The sever ended up hitting an air vent near the door that Sabu had shut and since the vent was made out of some weak material, most likely to cut back on cost, it immediately snapped off and went inside the air duct. And instead of coming back down to the floor and smashing to bits, the Phillip DeVille server actually landed in the air duct where it was out of reach.


	29. Some Give All

Even though the Phillip DeVille server did shed light on how the UST worked, Ryan's dedication to the mission meant that neither of them could get distracted by anything as long as they were still on duty. Rachel didn't know how to feel about the DeVille story now that she knew it was real. She didn't really feel disgust at first, instead, she was curious as to how two twins could hide their unconventional family for so long without being identified sooner. Someone had to have been helping them, most likey their friends, perhaps Tommy? Either way, the one thing Rachel agreed to before going back and searching the racks of servers was that once she returned to Los Angeles, she was finally going to track down Tommy and his friends in order to get to the bottom of the DeVille story.

As Rachel and Ryan resumed their search for the server with the virus, outside in the air, Corporal Mays, came in through the line pleading for help, saying, "I've got one on my tail."

"I'm on it," Master Sergeant Santiago replied before Turing his attention to the UST jet attempting to shoot down his fellow fighter Loud Five.

Master Sergeant Santiago managed to spot the UST jet in question and immodesty shot it out of the sky. The extreme sight of the enemy plane exploding in the air and coming crashing down contrasted with what was going on the ground a few yards away. Corporal Jamie Figueroa and Privates Savannah and Samaya Green, and Ji Yeon Park had just rendezvoused with Private Frederick Gast and they were now escorting him to the base of the parabolic antennas. Once they reached the base, Jamie handed Freddie the tool box and the latter pulled out a series of tools in order to begin to tamper with the panel at the base of the antenna. Similar to his fellow Twin One fighter Specialist Tom Daniels, Freddie had a Master's degree in engineering, although he specialized in computer engineering and had knowledge of broadcast engineering, making him the one more qualified for the task.

Concurrently, Ryan and Rachel had resumed their search and narrowed it to a specific section of the server farm, to which Rachel responded, "Okay, these are the project codenames."

"Project Aletheia," Rachel said, reading the label of the server on her end.

"Project Yellow Pill," Ryan said, reading the label on the server on his end.

"Project Gilead," Rachel said.

"Project Xylnn," Ryan said.

As the search for the correct server unfolded in Mer-a-Lac, the overseers in Station Three seemed to have almost forgotten the building as they ordered the majority of their troops to the airstrip. This lead to the deployment of hundreds more Deplorables onto the battlefield to deal with the masses of Resistance fighters landing all across Station Three. While most of these Deplorables spread out, some stayed near the large metal door where Freddie was near a few minutes before.

While many of the members of Twin One hid behind crates and other objects, a pack of three Deplorables made their way to the parabolic antenna, spotted Freddie, pointed their rifles at him, and one of them asked, "Hey you, who are you, what are you doing?"

That one voice sent shivers down Freddie's spine, he began to feel one of his trademark panic attacks begin to start as he turned around to face the Deplorables, and responded with a stutter, "Uh, I c...can e...expl..."

He was cut short when the rest of the Twin One fighters jumped out from their hiding spots and began shooting at the Deplorables, to which one of them screamed, "Incoming fire!"

"Take cover!" Another Deplorable screamed right before killing Private Savannah Green, only to then be shot down by Ace Jasper.

At the same time in Mer-A-Lac, Ryan and Rachel kept going through the different server's labels, with Rachel saying, "Project Michaela."

"Project Safe House," Ryan said, reading the label on one of the servers on her side.

"Project Psychic Vampire," Rachel said.

"Project Reek-O-Rama," Ryan said.

The two eventually got to the same server which left Rachel in silence once she read the name, to which Ryan asked her, "What?"

"Project Punim. This is it," Rachel replied as she gazed in astonishment.

Confused as to how Rachel could have concluded this was the server they needed, Ryan turned to her, and asked, "How do you know that?"

"I know because it's me," Rachel replied, referencing the Yiddish phrase her father used to call her.

Even though it made sense that Josh would have named his project "Punim" in order to make it easier for someone like Rachel to find it, they had to make sure it was the right one. In order to confirm their suspicions, they plugged the server up to the same computer Rachel used to see what was inside the Phillip DeVille server. Once everything came up on the various monitors, the two scoured the screens for the virus. For the most part, the server was full of blue prints and files containing the code needed to run the project. While at first it seemed like just another collection of top secret documents, one file immediately caught the attention of the two. Hidden among a deluge of files, there was one named "DOS," or in other words, "Daughter of Sin." Their hard work had finally paid off as they had finally found the secret virus.

Now that they had confirmed this was the server they needed, Ryan and Rachel headed to the door with their prize in Ryan's hands; however, once they heard shots firing on the other side, Ryan grabbed his walkie talkie, and said, "Sabu, we found the virus."

On the outside of the server farm, Sabu was busy defending himself from five Deplorables, all of whom were shouting a slur, "Remove Kebab," as they tried to get into the room where the previous Deplorables Sabu had killed had failed to report in from afterwards. Sabu had managed to shoot two of these Deplorables and their bodies acted like a small barricade on the doorway, making anybody trying to get in have to take the time to stop shooting and jump over their corpses.

"Hold on, I'm a bit busy," Sabu replied as he crouched over the desk for cover but kept firing the longer weapon he had taken from the Deplorable who had initially spotted him hiding under the same desk at the direction of the Deplorables in order to prevent them from crossing into the room.

Sabu then got up from his cover and realized he had shot another Deplorable while responding to Ryan; however this only resulted in even angrier Deplorables who began to fire back more indiscriminately. This mass wave of bullets flying everywhere disoriented Sabu, distracting him from the various bullets coming towards him and striking him in both shoulders and chest.

Even from behind the metal door that separated both rooms, Ryan and Rachel heard Sabu expelled a loud scream, causing Ryan to frantically put his walkie talkie to his mouth, and scream, "Sabu?!"

A now weakened Sabu, lying on top of the table and coughing up blood out from his foamy mouth, grabbed his walkie talkie, and eerily responded with a piece of advice, "Climb, climb out the window. You can still deliver the virus to the Resistance."

"If they can land safely on the ground then you can hand them the server," Sabu added right before getting shot in the shoulder again.

As Sabu fired back at the Deplorables, shooting another one down, he got up from lying on the desk, and told Ryan, "I'm locking the server farm door now."

This realization that Sabu was about to keep Ryan and Rachel from intervening and possibly saving his life shocked the former, causing him to scream at the door frantically, "Sabu!"

With the remaining force he had, Sabu shot the remaining Deplorable, and then proceeded to say to Ryan via the walkie talkie, "Shukraan jazilaan."

(Thank you, very much.)

With only a few more bullets in the rifle he took from the Deplorable he initially killed in the room, Sabu aimed the weapon and prepared to fire it at the card reader in order to make it harder for someone to be able to get inside the server room. However, just as he fired his last shots at the device on the wall, the last Deplorable he shot managed to sum up the energy to fire one final shot at the "terrorist" who injured him first. That Deplorable was able to shoot Second Lieutenant Sabu Yehia right in the head, sending his lifeless body tumbling to the floor where his blood and brain matter splattered all over. Now that the initial threat was eliminated, the Deplorable used the remaining energy he had to inform his superiors via his walkie talkie that they needed to bring a cutting torch to Mer-A-Lac to open the door that lead to the server room. Once he made that report, the Deplorable gave into the effects of the blood loss from the bullet wounds he suffered and died.

Meanwhile, up in the main control tower, Second Lieutenant Harris learned about unusual activities occurring inside the server farm in Mer-A-Lac, and informed Anthony about it, saying "Sir, there's been unauthorized access at the server farm."

"What?" Anthony replied as he was not sure why there would be activity inside Thump's personal home when the battle was raging on the grounds of the base, out at sea, and in the air.

"It's just come in sir," Second Lieutenant Harris replied.

While he kept looking out of the huge window of the control tower as he decided what to do next, Anthony then turned around on the heels of his shoes, and ordered, "Get an armored car waiting for me in the east hangar and send my remaining guard squadron into battle."

"Two men with me, now," Anthony added as he signaled some of his Deplorable Guards to accompany him by bending his index finger towards him as he walked out of the room.

Anthony gave one more order before exiting the premises, telling the rest of the officers inside, "Get this base under control."

Back at the server farm, Ryan, like Rachel, was still busy mourning Sabu, however the two decided to honor his sacrifice by pushing along with the mission, leading him to immediately communicate with Megan, and ask her, "Megan, are you there? Have you been able to contact the Resistance?"

"Not yet, I sent a team out to reboot the antenna and they haven't done it yet," Megan replied as she had not been able to reconnect with the main communication system.

Nervous that the mission could soon fall apart and that Sabu's sacrifice could have been all in vein, Ryan responded frantically, "They have to; they have to reboot that antenna. If you can contact the Resistance, then we can give them the virus."

At the same time, four UST jets were chasing down two Resistance jets from Loud Squadron, and once they managed to shoot down Loud Five and lost one of their fighters to Loud One, Loud Eight, or Airman Sergei Filimonov, a short, obese man with curly black hair of Russian decent, who instead of aiding his homeland's attack on the west, served his new home through the Resistance, spotted the three remaining planes ganging up on the leader, and exclaimed in his Russian accent through the line, "Master Sergeant, behind you!"

Master Sergeant Santiago had no time to react to the tailgating UST jets, and by the time the enemy opened fire, it was too late. The UST jets managed to shoot the back of Loud One, sending it spiraling to the ground. As the smoke being spewed out of the back of the plane began to fill the sky, all Bobby Santiago could think of was his girlfriend back in Michigan, the love he was leaving behind to mourn his passing. Master Sergeant Roberto Santiago Jr. died upon the moment his jet made impact with the ground. While a mini forest fire caused by the plane's explosion began to spread, a pack of Resistance fighters amassed right outside this area of the jungle that surrounded Station Three and began to charge towards the Deplorables on the other side.

"Go, go, go!" The Resistance fighters screamed as they ran across the runway, with many of them getting shot down by the wave of Deplorables coming towards them as well.

Back in Mer-A-Lac and with no way out of the server room but through the window, Ryan heeded his departed friend's advice and pointed his gun directly at the glass, and told Rachel, "Stand back."

Rachel did as he suggested and Ryan then went on to shoot the window, shattering the glass and splatting it both on the cement outside and the tile floor inside. Ryan then approached the window carefully as to not step on the glass by mistake and began to knock off the remaining shards of glass off of the window frame so that they would not cut themselves as they made their way through the window. Meanwhile, up in the air, the Resistance's planes, both fighter jets and troop transport planes, were coming under heavy fire from the UST's jets. In one of these transport jets, Rosie Hall was navigating through the commotion in the air as her gunner, Skyler Sinnott tried to return the fire by shooting at the UST jets pursuing them.

Skyler's shots were not successful in deterring a UST attack, and when an enemy jet struck the left side of the plane and wing and the plane began to come crushing down, Rosie grabbed a hold of the steering yoke, and screamed at her friend, "We're going down!"

While Peter, Ione, and Sam lead their troops into battle with a group of Deplorables coming towards them, the three of them and their troops stopped in their tracks as they watched Rosie's plane come falling out of the sky. Once the plane hit the ground it skid across the runway for a while before catching on fire. While Rosie and Skyler died as a result of the accident, the plane also managed to kill the Deplorables about to face off with the Twin One fighters by both crashing into them and roasting them to death in the proceeding explosion.

As the Deplorables screamed out in pain, Private First Class Aaron Wilcox tried to snap his fellow fighters out of their amazement by screaming, "Come on!"

While this managed to motivate the rest of Twin One to reengage in the battle, a new problem was emerging. At this time, the four remaining Deplorable Guards that Anthony did not take with him to Mer-A-Lac had just exited the base and were now on the battlefield. Meanwhile, back at the server farm room, Ryan and Rachel were now stripping off the Deplorable armor they used to sneak inside Thump's house in order move more freely as they escaped through the window. However, both of them kept the utility belt as they could use it with a rope they found inside the room to travel down safely. Even though the two were clearly in a hurry, Ryan and Rachel began to speed things up once they heard a noise that sounded as if someone was trying to cut down the door. With someone of the other side cutting through the door, the pair needed to think fast if they wanted to escape with the virus. They tried looking for a place to tie the rope so that they could make their way down to the ground but they could not find a structure secure enough, meaning that one of them would have to go onto the roof and try to find something secure to tie the rope to.

Concurrently on the runway, Anthony's Deplorable Guards had made it to the area where Peter, Ione, and Sam's teams had converged and began to fire on them. While the Twin One fighters began to fire back, these Deplorables did not go down as easy as the other's they had encountered. The Deplorable Guards were not just gun-nuts who formed a right wing death squad; they were trained warriors who were instructed to protect their designated officers and locations. The superior training of the Deplorable Guards really confused the Twin One fighters, causing them to retreat and expose themselves to harm's way. As the members of Twin One began to run towards the large metal door leading into the base where they could hide in between the door frame and door itself, the Deplorable Guards began to shoot fleeing fighters in the back. One by one, they were all shot down; Private Ji Yeon Park got shot in the back, Private Samaya Green got shot in the head, Corporal Violet Cochran got shot in the legs and chest. Even though they were all running towards safety, Ace turned back and ran towards Violet while she was still alive in order to attempt to get her out of harm's way. However, once he got down on the floor to pick her up, one of the Deplorable Guards managed to shoot him in the arm. This scared Ace and he began to run back towards the metal door; however he too was shot on the side of the chest as he stumbled back to the doorway. At the same time in the server farm and with the rope hanging across her body like a sash, Rachel was sticking her head out of the window as she volunteered herself to jump onto the roof and look for something to tie the rope to. As she placed both of her feet on the bottom part of the window frame, Rachel prepared to jump towards the edge of the room, but as she moved a bit, she began to lose her balance.

It looked as if she was about to fall out of the second-story window, luckily Ryan grabbed a hold of her body before she fell out, screaming as he held her, "Careful!"

"I'm okay," she replied right before she prepared for a second try where she managed to get her grip on the roof.

Simultaneously on the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, Megan had finished rebooting the plane's communication system, and she began to communicate with her team via the walkie talkie, saying, "Jamie, Jamie, come in, please. I'm all set on my end, I just need the antennas to be rebooted."

"Hold on," Jamie replied.

It was at that moment that Jamie pointed at Freddie curled up in fetal position with his hands over his ears and rocking himself back and forward because the violence had sent him into a deep state of shock, and told the remaining fighters, "The antennas, we need to snap Freddie out of his trauma so that he can finish rebooting it."

With the Deplorable Guards shooting towards the metal door, no one wanted to venture out from their hiding spot and help Freddie, but when Hazel realized this could be the heroic opportunity she needed to repent for her decision not to vote for Wendy Rogers, she got up from the corner, and screamed, "I'm going for it!"

Hazel immediately ran out from their hiding spot with her rifle sticking out, but before she could even take five steps and fire back, one of the Deplorable Guards managed to shoot her down. One fatal shot to the head was all it took to bring Private Hazel Levine's body tumbling to the floor where here last muscle spasm resulted in her firing off her rifle and shooting a bleeding Ace in the shoulder by accident. Meanwhile at Mer-A-Lac, Anthony and his two Deplorable Guards had made it to Thump's home and they made their way up to the room outside of the server farm. Even though there were bodies all across the room and hallway leading to the room, the three of them did not care to watch where they stepped. Anthony didn't just step on the lifeless corpses of the other Deplorables, he predictably kicked Sabu's bleeding head out of the way with his black boot once he got close to the metal door. Back outside, Rachel had just gotten onto the roof but she couldn't find something to tie the rope down too. At first, Ryan suggested looking around on the other side of the building, but then all of a sudden the metal door began to open up as the technician had finished cutting down the door. Ryan knew he could no longer stay behind; he had to get up on the roof with Rachel if he wanted to make it out alive.

As he began to put his right foot up on the window frame, the door swung wide open, and as the Deplorable Guards began to fire inside, Ryan fired back, poked his head out of the window, and exclaimed, "Rachel."

Concurrently on the runway, the surviving Twin One fighters seemed to have been losing the battle. While they were hiding, Staff Sergeant Alexander Jasper had succumbed to his injuries and died of blood loss, his body just lied on the floor in front of the large metal door. With so much loss in such a short amount of time, it looked like there was no hope for Twin One and the Resistance after all, of they couldn't get Freddie to reboot the antennas, the mission would have been all in vain. Luckily, when all seemed lost, one Twin One fighter pulled out his weapon, a weapon that only he had.

Peter lifted himself up from the floor, grasped Erebus from the hilt with both hands together as he pointed the sword up to the sky, and walked out into the crossfire as he whispered to himself, "Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix."

"Peter!" His wife, Ione screamed in horror as he began to get closer to the firing Deplorable Guards.

At the same time, Ryan was still busy shooting back at Anthony and the Deplorable Guards. He had gotten lucky and had managed to shoot down one of the Deplorable Guards, however, this only infuriated Anthony and the remaining Deplorable Guard. The two fired more shots at Ryan from the doorway, and while their bullets did pass his arm, they did not penetrate him. Fortunately, Ryan had gotten lucky again and managed to shoot down the remaining Deplorable Guard.

Meanwhile, Peter was still making his way through the sea of bullets coming towards him; however, every single shot fired at him seemed to travel around him as he continued mumbling, "Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus nostris, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta."

Even though she was amazed at the fact that not a single bullet seemed to hit her husband, almost as if he had some sort of protective shield around him, she was not comfortable with him risking his life like this, causing her to exclaim, "Peter, stop screwing around, come back!"

Peter seemed to have blocked Ione out of his mind because he didn't even notice her screaming at him, instead he headed onwards to the base of the antennas, saying, "Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genetrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus nostris, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta."

Eventually, Peter made it to the base of the antennas where he shook Freddie, and told him, "Hey, Freddie, snap out of it, you need to finish rebooting it."

This shake seemed to have worked as Freddie woke up from his trance and finished connecting the final wire, and once the parabolic antennas were functioning properly, back on the Globemaster III, Megan cheered, and said to herself, "Yes!"

While an enthusiastic Megan began searching through the various frequencies to communicate with the Resistance, back in Mer-A-Lac, Ryan was firing shots at Anthony while he stood on the window frame.

As Ryan prepared to jump onto the roof, he handed Rachel the server with the "Daughter of Sin" virus, and told her, "Keep going, keep going!"

Rachel moved a bit to the right from the edge of the roof, but she still leaned over the edge to see what was going on. Ryan kept firing at Anthony, but he couldn't seem to shoot him. That's when Ryan cut his losses and decided that now was the time to make it onto the roof. Even though he thought he was ready for the jump, he did not notice Anthony getting a clear shot now that he wasn't firing back.

This resulted in Anthony shooting Ryan's left thigh, unbalancing him, causing him to slip and fall, and Rachel exclaiming, "Ryan!"

Ryan's fall was incredibly heartbreaking for Rachel to watch. At first, Ryan's upper body leaned into the building, that's where his signature turquoise bolo tie got caught on a shard of glass still attached to the window frame and ripped off from his neck. Ryan then tumbled down to the ground where his body landed on top of the shattered glass he threw out the window. As Rachel observed Ryan's motionless body lying on the floor, she moved away from the edge and began to think about her next move, even though she was still dealing with the loss of her closest partner. The sound Rachel created as she moved across the roof, along with her voice when she called out Ryan's name, caught Anthony's attention. He knew there was someone else out there, someone who was in possession of a stolen blade server. That's when Anthony turned around and headed to a location where he would have a better view of the roof.

At the same time, Peter and Freddie were starting to run back to the secure spot near the metal door, all the while, Ione screamed at her husband, "Peter, come back! Come with me!"

Peter was able to make it to safety pretty quickly, unfortunately, the slower Freddie became an easy target for the Deplorable Guards who shot him multiple times in the back and sent him to the ground.

This whole time everyone thought Ione was the one who's spouse was in trouble, however, Sam proved them all wrong as she ran out onto the runway, frantically screaming, "Freddie!"

The remaining Twin One fighters got out of their hiding spots and began firing in order to distract the Deplorable Guards from the much closer threat, Sam, while at the same time she grabbed her weak husband in her arms, and told him, "Freddie, don't go, don't go. I'm here, I'm here."

"It's okay, it's okay," Freddie responded as he tried to stroke Sam's cheek but couldn't summon the energy to do so.

"Freddie," Sam whispered as she saw her husband's head and eyes begin to lean backwards.

"D...d...don't worry. J...j...just think of the p...p...park, and I'll always b...be w...with y...you," Freddie told Sam, referencing the park where the two met as toddlers, right before he succumbed to his injuries and died in his wife's embrace.

Meanwhile, up in the air over the ocean, the UST jets were getting better at shooting down the Resistance's jets, something that Lieutenant Colonel Johanssen pointed out when he updated Football leader, saying, "We're all sustaining many losses, Coronel."

"There's no turning back now, we need to press the attack," Arnold responded right before another Resistance jet was destroyed next to him, shaking his plane and himself as well.

While the Resistance kept loosing planes, the remaining jets kept bombing the two remaining Navy cruisers, and with an opportunity to bomb the TTS Sumia one more time, Trevor came in through the line, and said to the rest of Rocket Squadron, "Hit that opening."

One of the people who received Trevor's orders was Rocket Three, or First Lieutenant Linda Duval, a tall athletic woman with fair skin and brown hair who used to play soccer while she was in school in Yucaipa, who responded, "We see it Rocket Leader."

As her squadron approached the already damaged, but functioning, cruiser, the former soccer star came onto the line to communicate with her fellow squad members, and said, "Bombs away!"

At that moment, seven planes swooped across the TTS Sumia, dropping seven more bombs all across the top. While the bombs did not significantly damage the hull, two of the bombs detonated near the rear of the cruiser where they significantly damaged the propellers, thus making it difficult for the ship to be able to move from its position.

While the bombing run did shake the cruiser, the loss of propeller power did shake the ship from the bottom, causing Commander Scott, to scream from his position of leadership up on the bridge to a technician through the communication system, "What's happening?!"

"We've lost control of the propellers, sir," the technician, Seaman Dennis Davis, a thirty year old man with dirty blond hair and an even _dirtier_ work outfit and face as they were both covered in oil stains and sweat, reported from below deck in the engine room as his crew were trying to find a way of alleviating this problem.

As the TTS Sumia just stood in the ocean and it appeared as if it could no longer fight back, Coronel Shortman said to himself, "That cruiser's disabled."

At the same time, back on the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, Megan was now using the updated communications system to contact the Resistance, and saying into the microphone of the headset, "This is Twin One calling any Resistance planes that can here me."

When no one responded to her call, Megan did as she had done so many times before and switched the communications system to the next available frequency, and said, "Is anybody out there? This is Twin One, come in, over."

Fortunately, the frequency that Megan landed on, one of many she had tried, was the same one used by all of the squadron leaders, and once he heard this call, Coronel Shortman switched his communications board so that he would only be talking on this line, and responded, "This is Coronel Arnold Shortman, Twin One, we hear you."

The sound of an official from the Resistance responding to her emergency calls immediately put a smile on Megan's face; however, she restrained herself from doing a sort of victory dance, and said, "We have the virus. Uh, they've found the 'Daughter of Sin' virus, they need a plane to land somewhere safe and deliver the server to the Resistance. You have to find a place that is free of danger; it's the only way we're going to get it out of here."

This precise request really puzzled Arnold as he couldn't think of such a secure location to land a plane to pick up the server Twin One had found since the treat of the Navy cruisers was still so real. However, as he looked over towards both the damaged TTS Sumia and the more-or-less intact cruiser, the TTS Morgan, a figurative light bulb went off in his head.

That's when he added Gerald to the line, and said, "Football Two, contact Miami; call up a fleet of boats armed with grappling hooks, I have an idea."

"Standby, Twin One, we're on it," Colonel Shortman said to Megan.

Even though the Colonel of the Resistance Air Force had confirmed that he was there to help them, Megan blocked him out of her mind and instead decided to think about the man who sent her on this redemption mission, Rachel's dad, and whispered as she pointed up to the sky, "This is for you, Josh."

Even though the fighting was originally spread out across the base, the Deplorables had managed to corral the Twin One fighters under the command of John Bouchie near the area where the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III was stationed. While three members of the specific group kept on fighting, the Deplorables were able to shoot down the Bouchie brothers, First Sergeant John Bouchie and Sergeant First Class Randy Bouchie as they popped out from behind a crate in a failed attempt to take down some nearby Deplorables. Private First Class Min Jun Park was also shot to death by a Deplorable as he tried to board the plane that brought them to Station Three in search for safety.

However, killing Min Jun was not enough for the Deplorable because he immediately became suspicious of the plane his victim had just tried to board. The Deplorable remembered seeing the plane land and then realized that not long after that was when the "Antifa attack" started. He came to the conclusion that the "Leftist Globalist extremists" sneaked onto the base on this plane and he had to destroy it so that they could not escape. The Deplorable then searched through his belt and pulled out his emergency grenade, pulled the pin out, and threw it into the plane. As he ran away for cover, the sound of the grenade hitting up against the walls of the plane rattled through the halls and caught Megan's attention from the cockpit. In an act of curiosity, Megan ran down from the cockpit and into the cargo bay to see what was making that loud noise. At first she couldn't find anything out of place, the light from the sunset coming in from the opening of the boarding ramp illuminated the small grenade. The sight of the explosive froze Megan in place and all she could think of was how great it felt to leave the clutches of her right-wing father and stand up for something she actually believed in.

The grenade then proceeded to detonate, causing an average-sized explosion that only grew in size once the fire reached the fuel. The explosion didn't just destroy the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, it also incinerated Sergeant Major Megan Rimmer in the process. The sound of the plane exploding was so loud that it caught the attention of the Twin One fighters halfway across the base, especially Sam. Immediately after losing her husband and looking over at the rest of the runway and no longer seeing the tail fin of the plane that brought them to Florida, she realized that she was not going to make it out alive. While most would have taken this realization as a depressing one, Sam took it as a way of seeing that there was nothing left to do but to go out as a hero. With her rifle in her hands, Sam began to walk straight towards the Deplorable Guards; all the while the rest of the Twin One fighters stopped firing and just watched everything unfold.

The Deplorable Guards began to get closer to Sam in order to make the fight much more risky, something which was a mistake as Sam quickly shot two of them without changing her stern, low-browed expression. Sam was on a quest for vengeance, and that vengeance helped quench the pain from a bullet shot in the arm from one of the other Deplorable Guards. Instead of screaming out in pain, Sam merely grabbed her rifle even tighter and shot down that Deplorable Guard down. However, this self-imposed tunnel-vision where Sam only focused on the immediate threat did not work out for herself either as the remaining Deplorable Guard shot her in the knee when she was not paying attention to her surroundings. Sam immediately fell to the ground as she could no longer stand up, or even walk for that matter. However, as the remaining Deplorable Guard began to approach her to get closer to throw a grenade at the people near the metal door, Sam tossed her body up from the ground and shot the Deplorable Guard before he could pass her.

Sam had stopped the Deplorable Guard from getting close to the door, but now the active grenade he was preparing to throw at the other members of Twin One rolled out from the dead Deplorable Guard's right hand right next to her. With only seconds until it detonated and without the ability to run, or even walk, away, Sam turned her body and began facing what was once in back of her. However, instead of calling for help from the other Twin One fighters, she rested her gaze on the body of her dead husband. As she thought about Freddie's last words to her about the park where they first met and the grenade went off, disintegrating everything around it into a series of piece, Corporal Samantha North then joined her husband once again.

Meanwhile, back on the roof of Mer-A-Lac, Rachel had a managed to come up with a new plan to deliver the virus to the Resistance now that Ryan was no longer with her. She had just finished going through the first part of the plan, and now she was onto the following part; she had to get up onto the balcony of the tower, the highest point of the Mer-A-Lac complex. Luckily, she still had the rope she took from the server farm room, and she planned on using it in order to get up to the tower. It took her a few tries to get the rope up onto the balcony, but once she did, she tied the other end of the rope to the utility belt she took from a dead Deplorable and began to scale the wall. At the same time, off the coast of Mer-A-Lac, a series of thirty fishing boats armed with grappling hooks began to emerge near the wreckage of the naval battle. The boats Arnold had requested from the Miami branch had arrived and they were ready to execute his plan; the boats were to attach their grappling hooks to the TTS Sumia and crash it into its sister ship, the TTS Morgan.

As the ships began to approach the bow of the Navy cruiser, the fleet's Captain, Gregory Ross, a rugged-looking man with graying brown hair and beard and years of experience sailing, grabbed a hold of the radio that all of the other sailors used to communicate with each other, and said, "Vessel One, locked on target, prepare to strike."

One by one, all of these ships of various models began attaching their grappling hooks to the TTS Sumia, and once all of the ships had a hold of the cruiser, Captain Ross came in through the radio, and exclaimed, "Motor engines, full power!"

At first, the ships could barely move the damaged cruiser, but as more energy was applied, the TTS Sumia began to move eastward. That was when the Admiral of the fleet stationed at Mer-A-Lac, Wayne Bailey, an aged man with fair skin and thinning blond hair, spotted the incoming cruiser from the starboard window on the bridge.

With a quick turn on the heels, Admiral Bailey turned around to face his subordinates, and screamed, "Initiate a Milt Rodney, immediately!"

Confused by the invocation of the Republican Party's nominee for President in 2012 and an outspoken critic of Thump during the 2016 election, Ensign Harold Lee, a middle-aged man with fair skin and brown hair, turned to face the Admiral, and asked, "What?!"

"Reverse position! Reverse position!" Admiral Bailey responded with a loud yell, alluding to the fact that Rodney often flip-flopped on campaign issues during the election in order to appeal to whoever his audience was at the time he gave a particular speech.

The crew of the TTS Morgan eventually understood the Admiral's orders and began to put the cruiser into reverse. The ship began to move backwards, but its engines were too slow for the incoming Navy cruiser whose hull immediately impacted the ship's bow. As the fishing boats pulled the disabled cruiser eastward, the TTS Sumia began to crash up against the hull of the TTS Morgan and began to push the latter out of the water. Once the TTS Morgan began to turn over onto its portside, all off the sailors, including Admiral Bailey, and all of their loose equipment were all tossed over to the left side of the ship where their bones and bodies were crushed by the weight of each other and their equipment. As everyone on board screamed out in pain, the fishing boats had managed to pull the TTS Sumia so far out eastward that the TTS Morgan capsized on its portside, trapping everyone on board the damaged ship with water leaking from the walls and the floor which was once the roof. The TTS Sumia was also dammed as the impact of the hulls resulted in tears to the ship's portside, leading water to seep in and sink the Navy cruiser.

Concurrently, on the tower of Mer-A-Lac, Rachel had just made it to the top of the tower and could now peep over the handrail which she quickly jumped over. Now that she was on the floor, she could bring her guard down a little and take in her surroundings. While she was surrounded by fine architecture and an elegant layout of furniture, all she could notice were the sounds of explosions and jet engines. She couldn't get a good view from the balcony she was standing on, so she headed over to the one left of her, going through the fancy Tower Room she didn't even seem to acknowledge. Once she was on the other balcony, she had a better view of the ocean and the battle that was beginning to wrap up. UST ships were sinking but their jets were starting to pick off many of the remaining Resistance jets. While she could not tell who was who up in the sky, a smile came on her face as she looked down to the ground and spotted something she very much liked. Rachel knew now was the time was to head down outside, but as she turned back into the Tower Room, out came Anthony from the staircase, holding his gun straight out at Rachel.

As Anthony aimed his weapon at Rachel, who had begun to back away from him, he gave her a menacing look, and asked, "Who are you?"

Even though she was afraid that the uniformed man would shoot her if she tried to be a smart-ass, Rachel summed up the courage to look him straight in the eye, and respond, "You know who I am."

"I'm Rachel Alcroft, daughter of Joshua Alcroft, and you've just lost," she added as Anthony began to stare at her in confusion since he didn't know who Rachel was.

Even with this important piece of information, Anthony thought the daughter of the traitorous engineer was no match for the tactical genius he saw himself as, and cockily replied, "Oh, I have, have I?"

As the two just stood staring at each other, neither of them knowing what the other was going to do next, Anthony used his leverage as the only one wielding a weapon by pointing at the stolen device in Rachel's hands, and saying, "That server, hand it over."

While it might have seen like Anthony had the odds in his favor, Rachel was able to glance over her shoulder and get a view of what was below her, leading to her swinging her arms, tossing the server with the "Daughter of Sin" virus, and screaming, "Catch!"

Anthony didn't shoot at Rachel, or the server for that matter, as he was confused as to why Rachel would throw away something she clearly worked to obtain, but as he tried to rationalize what had just transpired, Rachel continued to stare him down, and said, "My father's revenge, he created a virus that can shut off all of the nukes, and I've I just handed it over to people who will use it against you."

This shocking realization sent chills down Anthony's spine as this only added to the list of "crimes" Josh had committed against the UST, but he tried to play it off as if he did not believe Rachel, and retorted slyly, "Don't play games with me, you threw it off the ledge, it probably just crashed onto the floor and broke into a million pieces. But even if someone caught it, there's no way one of your planes could get off the ground without getting shot down. The server will never make it out of Station Three; all of your planes will be destroyed! I'm losing nothing my time, but I will be the next Attorney General, I will get lascivious Cousin Angie's mansion. You, on the other hand, die with the Resistance."

Immediately after Anthony finished his speech, Rachel heard a sound of a two gunshots and immediately flinched as an attempt to run from what she thought were bullets directed at her. She stood frozen for two seconds after she heard the loud noise, but she soon realized that her body had not been harmed in any way. After tapping all across her torso just to make sure that she had not been shot, Rachel looked up and saw that Anthony had been the one who had been shot, on his right arm and right thigh to be exact. The blond Lieutenant grabbed his right arm with his left hand in an attempt to stop the pain, but he dropped his gun on the floor and then he immediately fell down himself. Rachel was quick to pick up Anthony's gun from the floor in order to defend herself from an attack, even if he was curled up in fetal position as he groaned out of pain. She wondered who had fired the shots that brought Anthony down, and when she scanned the Tower Room with her eyes, she found him. At the entrance leading to the staircase was where Rachel found Ryan, pointing his gun out at where Anthony once stood, and leaning onto the bannister with his left hand for support as he had injured his left foot during his fall. It seemed that Ryan had not died after all, and he had even managed to make a heroic comeback.

With the threat neutralized for the moment, Rachel ran over to Ryan with a huge smile on her face, but when she saw that he was still aiming his gun at Anthony and Rachel turned around and began to stomp towards his body to shoot him with his own gun, Ryan lunged over at Rachel, and said, "Hey, leave him, leave him. Let's go."

Now that Ryan had managed to persuade Rachel not to waste her time shooting Anthony some more and that Rachel had begun to help Ryan walk by letting him lean on her, Ryan was finally able to look at his new friend, and ask, "Hey, we might have won this battle, but do you think the person who will finally bring Thump down is out there?"

"You know what, I do. Someone's out there, he, _or she_ , might not even know it yet," Rachel responded, emphasizing the possibility that a female could be the one to "bring Thump down" as the two began to exit the Tower Room.


	30. Sacrifices Lead To Hope

While the two could have stayed up in the tower room and discussed their predictions concerning the fate of the regime, Ryan and Rachel both began to head downstairs. As the two carefully walked down the stairs as the wounded Ryan continued to lean on Rachel for support, the former realized that his partner no longer had the server with the "Daughter of Sin" virus with her, and began to panic, beliving that it had been damaged. In order to calm him down, Rachel brought Ryan's ears closer to her and told him her plan to deliver the virus to the Resistance. When she was on the roof and it looked like Ryan had died, Rachel called in for backup, but the only people who could reach her in such short notice were Specialist Tom Daniels and Private Jessica Carmichael. The couple did eventually come to Rachel's aide and had reached the entrance to Mer-A-Lac at the same moment Rachel had made it to the balcony of the Tower Room. At first, she thought she could make it down stairs and the two could escort her to a Resistance plane, but Anthony arrived and ruined her plan. At this point, Rachel had nowhere to go, all hope seemed to be lost, but when she spotted Tom and Jessica on the ground, she screamed for their attention and threw the server off the balcony. She did not truly know if the server had crashed on the floor and broke, but she did not hear any kind of scream indicating that it had broken either. Once he heard the story from Rachel, Ryan began to cry hysterically, not because he could not believe the risk Rachel took, but because he was so desperate at the moment so much that he believed Rachel's insane plan actually worked. After he had calmed down, Ryan instead turned his gaze at Rachel, the woman he had only met the day before and had now pulled off the greatest act of espionage in all of human history with. Rachel reciprocated the act and stared into Ryan's blue eyes as the two made it down the stairs to the Tower Room and out of Mer-A-Lac where the two looked up at the sky and noticed something passing them above.

At the same time Ryan and Rachel were escaping the mansion of horrors, Anthony had more or less become accustom to the pain of the bullet wounds and began crawling towards the balcony in order to see if there was someone on the ground who could help him. Once he made it to the railing and he managed to pull himself up off the ground, the first thing he noticed was not someone from the UST on the ground or even the air battle going on over the ocean. No, the first thing Anthony spotted was a large, dark cone flying through the clouds. While the mystery object could have easily been dismissed as another plane up in the air, this object didn't seem to act like the other planes Anthony could clearly of engaging the jets closer to the shore, the mystery object seemed to head out to sea. The object also seemed to lose altitude as it headed on its set trajectory. With Anthony's knowledge of weapons of mass destruction he obtained on his journey to become the next Attorney General, it didn't take him long in order to realize what in fact was going on. And once he knew what was about to transpire, Anthony's jaw dropped to the floor as one name ran through his mind, _Reggie_.

Anthony's initial guess was correct; his political frenemy, Reggie Greenfield, was the person behind the nuclear warhead heading in their direction. Immediately after getting a call from General Wilson, Reggie boarded a UST military jet and flew from New York City all the way to Arlington, Virginia. That was where the prime station that now had control of all the nuclear weapons across the country, along with those now stationed in the states of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and the District of Columbia, Station One, was located. Once he made it to Station One, General Wilson gave him full command of the Station's respond to the attack on Station Three, and he responded the only way he really knew, with the total force of the arsenal at his disposal. Reggie walked into the room where the nuclear missiles were launched, a dark room with the latest computers grazing the open space; the aesthetic opposite of the original layout featuring a hallway-like room with artificial lights and computers from the 1960's that were all but impossible to hack. Now that he was at Station One making decisions for the entire UST, Reggie finally had his own subordinate to boss around, Second Lieutenant Eugene Edwards; another young man with fair skin and dark hair, although his hair was straight and he was much heavier than Reggie.

No more than two minutes after Reggie arrived into the launching room; Second Lieutenant Edwards approached his new boss, and asked, "Major Greenfield, should we target their air fleet?"

Without altering his Thump-like expression of a puckered mouth to indicate he was thinking about his next decision, Reggie informed his subordinate of an order he had received before arriving at Station One, saying, "No, Supreme Commander Kabadaian has just informed me that he has dispensed someone to take care of the enemy aircraft and their land forces. Target a spot six miles off the coast of Mer-A-Lac. A W-87 should suffice."

"Yes sir," Second Lieutenant Edwards replied before heading off to his desk where he would begin the process of launching a nuclear missile.

As he watched his subordinate return to his desk, Reggie ordered him and the rest of the officers responsible with launching the nuclear missiles as he bobbed his head up and then down, "You may fire when ready."

With a stern look on his face, Reggie looked on as a group of officers punched in the right launch codes into their keyboards. The couple dozen officers stationed in the room each performed their duties to authorize a nuclear strike as a team of two crewmen prepared the Minuteman III missile for launch.

Once the crewmen reported that they were all done, Second Lieutenant Edwards spoke to the entire room, saying, "Commence primary ignition."

The officers inside proceeded to launching the missile, and then moved their gaze from their own individual monitors at their desks to the large monitor mounted on the wall in front of them. At first, all they saw was an open field with a large cement door on the floor beginning to open, but a few seconds later, smoke began to come out of the ground. The crewmen located underground both left the underground silo for safety a few moments before the smoke began to rise up to the surface and had a good view of the smoke turn to fire through a small window on the large metal door separating them from certain incineration. The fire then proceeded to come out from the underground silo, and all of the officers, including Reggie and Second Lieutenant Edwards watched on the monitor as the Minuteman III missile took off and headed into space. Over the course of the next few minutes, the missile made its way to Florida where both Ryan and Rachel and Anthony caught a glimpse of it in the sky. While Ryan and Rachel began to walk eastward toward the beach, Anthony merely watched in horror from the balcony of the Tower Room as the W-87 warhead hurled down to the ocean where it proceeded to detonate.

As he saw the ball of fire grow exponentially after the initial moment of ignition, Coronel Shortman realized that they could not continue fighting there if the Resistance Air Force was going to survive, and said out loud while no one could hear him, "Twin One, your intentions were noble and your deaths shall be honored."

With very little time to evacuate and no way to get in contact with the Resistance fighters on the ground since the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III had been destroyed, Arnold decided to cut his losses and leave without the "Daughter of Sin" virus, and said to every Resistance plane through a special line where only he could respond, "All non-Florida based planes, set course for Atlanta."

Since Atlanta was the closest city with a Resistance base not in Florida and the location where a lot of fuel was sent in order so that the planes could refuel and return to their home bases, all of the remaining Resistance planes immediately followed Shortman's orders and left Palm Beach. Even though the Resistance was leaving the battlefield without the information they went for in the first place, they now had a messaging victory under their belt. While the Resistance had been involved in small skirmishes and medium-sized battles across the country in recent months, the Battle of Palm Beach was the first major battle for any Resistance branch, along with being the first major victory for the newly united Resistance. While the emotions were mixed among the various survivors of the Battle of Palm Beach, they all at least knew they could take on the massive UST and win.

At first, it seemed that the evacuation to Atlanta would go smoothly as they had destroyed all of the UST jets and weapons systems on Station Three. Unfortunately, that reality literally came crashing down once the Resistance planes made it passed the UST base. One by one, Resistance planes began to explode in the air and began to crash down on the ground. The Resistance pilots didn't know where it was coming from, and the jets scrambled to fight the enemy, whom most of them presumed to be UST fighter jets. The projectiles bringing down the Resistance planes were in fact missiles coming from the cruisers, like the TTS Lina Bruno, named after the former First Lady of France, a former singer and model, and a woman Thump spread rumora about dating when he was married to his second wife, and destroyers, like the TTS Katie Johnson, named after a woman who accused Thump of raping her when she was just thirteen, of the UST Navy's First Fleet.

The crown jewel of the First Fleet was the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier TTS Ronald J. Thump, with "TTS" standing for "Terrific Thump Ship." As the prime ship in the prime fleet, the TTS Ronald J. Thump lead the way in ensuring the regime's grip on power during all major engagements at sea on the eastern side of the country. Its massive size dwarfed every other aircraft carrier on Earth, except for the former USS Gerald R. Ford which Thump gave to China as payment in a deal which he promoted as his deal-making credentials in action but was really a terrible deal as the Chinese were able to manipulate Thump into giving them what they wanted.

While the various destroyers and cruisers continued to shoot down the various Resistance planes in the air, on the bridge of the TTS Ronald J. Thump, a single black-robed figure surrounded by uniformed Navy officers watched the one-sided battle play out outside. The figure was of average height and rather fit, even though the robes seemed to cover every body part. The figure wore black gloves and a black hood that casted a shadow over the eyes of the person underneath the garb. An interesting devise worn by the figure was a grey breathing apparatus with a pipe sticking out that went into the robe, the apparatus worn around the mouth didn't serve any other function but to make the voice of whoever wore it sound much deeper than it really was. This figure was not a member of the UST Navy, or of any branch of Thump's military, but the person underneath the mysterious facade did play an important role in the creation of the United States of Thump and was behind many of the events that had transpired up to that point. The figure was none other than the mysterious mentor and confidante of Michael Kabadaian, the Great Informer.

Meanwhile, on the land, even though their fellow Resistance fighters were being shot out of the sky one by one, Ryan and Rachel were both distracted by the giant fireball over the ocean surface. Even though the nuclear bomb went off so far away that it was not an immediate danger, the air blast the explosion created had picked up a massive amount of water that was now headed straight for the coastline. While Rachel might have been able to get to a high enough place to protect herself, Ryan would have not been able to get to a secure location because of his foot. Rachel could have chosen to save herself, but instead she chose to take Ryan to the beach where they both sat down and watched as the tidal wave came roaring towards them.

With the sand seeping its way into their shoes on that fateful afternoon, Rachel glanced over at Ryan, who responded, "You're father would have been proud of you, Rachel.

The fact that Josh would've been proud of his daughter if he was still alive put a smile on Rachel's face, who then replied, "I know your mother is proud of you.

This reference to his deported mother Ryan mentioned during their fight after departing from Royal Woods brought tears of joy to Ryan's eyes as it meant Rachel had actually listened to what he had said more than half-a-day ago. Rachel saw him opening up with his emotions, and to comfort her partner, she grabbed a hold of Ryan's hand and in exchange, he joined her in staring off at the incoming body of water. Simultaneously, on the bridge of the TTS Ronald J. Thump, the Great Informer looked outward via the huge window as most of the Resistance planes came crashing down. While one would think the defeat of the enemy of the UST would be on the mind of the person responsible for the creation of said state, all the Great Informer could think of was an even which seemed virtually unimportant to the uninformed viewer, but in reality was the final catalyst that set the creation of this new world into order. Over fifteen years before the Battle of Palm Beach, there was a soccer game between Jim Jr. Junior High and Pacoima Middle School for a position in the Pacific Soccer League. The Jim Jr. Junior High team, just like the Resistance, thought they had the whole thing in the bag, but then an unforeseen conflict arose and condemned the team to failure, just like the Resistance once the First Fleet arrived. Both events were spearheaded by the Great Informer in the same ways, both from a behind-the-scenes perspective and from an involved spectator perspective. But in the end, everything turned out the way the Great Informer envisioned it as it was all part of the greater plan.

While the Great Informer was perceived as an important figure on board the TTS Ronald J. Thump, the official commander was actually being informed of what was occurring outside the ship. Fleet Admiral Roy Davis Jr. was the Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary of the Navy, the Fleet Admiral of the UST Navy, Commander of the First Fleet, Commanding Officer of the TTS Ronald J. Thump, and the White House Chief of Staff after the firing of the former Republican National Committee Chairman, Wyatt Stellmacher. Fleet Admiral Davis was a tall, sixty-four year old man dressed in a white Navy uniform with wrinkly fair skin, a large gray moustache, and a balding head of gray hair he kept hidden from public view underneath his white brimmed military cap. Fleet Admiral Davis served in the United States Navy prior to the rise of Thump, but he kept himself from criticizing him once he became President. After Kabadaian's Purge, he received a series of promotions for his perceived loyalty, including the top position in the entire Navy. Military service was a common occurrence in the Davis family; his grandfather, Arthur, fought in the trenches during World War I, and his father, Roy Sr., also enlisted in the Navy and was stationed at Pearl Harbor during the fateful Japanese attack. Fleet Admiral Davis might not have been the most faithful Thump ally, but he did follow orders and didn't cause problems for a regime riddled with leakers and malcontent officials.

As the Great Informer stood at the front of the bridge, looking out towards the coast, Fleet Admiral Davis approached the dark figure, and said, "The enemy planes have been either shot down or chased away, Great Informer, but there are still many combatants on the ground."

Without giving it much thought, the Great Informer made a quick one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn, and put its right hand up in the air with the index finger pointing towards the ceiling, and responded, "Prepare an amphibious landing party."

"Yes, Great Informer," Fleet Admiral Davis replied, bowing down to his overlord as the Great Informer left the bridge, leaving him to observe the First Fleet's actions.

Concurrently, back on the beach in front of Mer-A-Lac, Ryan and Rachel sat on the sand, embracing each other as they prepared for the end. In his last moments, Ryan closed his eyes and reminisced about all off the things he had done during his time with the Resistance. Many of them were questionable, but he found solace knowing that his mission to Mer-A-Lac would strengthen the Resistance's cause, even though he wasn't sure if Tom or Jessica had received the server or not. Rachel on the other hand was pretty sure that someone had gotten a hold of the server and that the "Daughter of Sin" virus and that it was now in the hands of the Resistance. Instead of closing her eyes like Ryan, she left them wide open, staring northward along the coastline, and thought about the most important people in her life. She thought of her father, Josh, who sent her on this wild mission in order to find the virus he had helped create in order to avenge his death. She thought about her mother, Miriam, who left this world all too soon, but who at least did not need to suffer any more than they did in the age of Thump. She thought of her older and younger sisters, Rebecca and Lisa, who she unfortunately cut ties with once she moved out of her father's home in accordance with her once pessimistic view on life, but hoped that her story of sacrifice would reach them so that they may know that their sister still cared for both of them.

But, probably the person whom she most thought about was her first and only boyfriend, Tommy Pickles. Rachel realized that she overreacted after finding out about Tommy's date to his brother's game's launch party. She was the one who broke up with him and he was merely trying to get back on the horse after losing his first girlfriend. While it was too late to change everything she had done over the past decade and a half, such as giving up her dream of becoming a child psychologist and working with underprivileged kids and instead pursuing a mind-numbing career in accounting, she was glad she got to meet Tommy and his friends and family. His younger brother, Dil, was truly an inspiration for creativity and individuality, his mother, Didi, was a kind woman who loved her like the daughter she never had, and Rachel loved her too as an outstanding mother figure who shared her interests in career paths and films. She was also glad she got to meet Tommy's friends; like the twins, Phil and Lil, in their youth, before the Thumpaganda machine smeared their lives for their own personal gain. Even if their life choices, which she learned were real less than an hour before, were questionable to say the least.

With the two finally at piece, Captain Ryan Rodriguez and First Lieutenant Rachel Alcroft held each other even tighter than before, with Rachel stroking Ryan's shoulders and Ryan stroking Rachel's wavy, long brown hair. The once two people most suspicious of each other were now stuck in a deep embrace on a beach in Florida when all of a sudden the massive tidal wave landed on the shore, immediately crushing Ryan and Rachel under the immense pressure at the moment of impact.

The buildings of Mer-A-Lac suffered the same fate as the two Resistance heroes, with the water pressure breaking the glass of the windows of the first and second floor. The tidal wave also managed to push the sunken UST Navy ships near and onto the shore, causing even more disaster such as when the TTS Morgan tore an opening onto the southeastern portion of the mansion, allowing even more seawater to seep into the complex. Station Three remained intact as the officers raised a seawall built around the base in order to protect it from the timely day that sea levels would get so high they could impede the base's functions. The water eventually retreated back into the ocean, revealing the destruction that lied at the bottom of the tidal wave. As the water retreated, the entire first floor of Mer-A-Lac came crashing down as the walls had been loosened after being bombarded and saturated underwater. The second floor of the mansion had also been flooded, but only about three-fourths of the way, meaning that anything not close to the ceiling had been damaged in the water. With so much damage to the structure, the tower leading up to the Tower Room gave out as well, sending the structure crashing down onto the second floor, which was now the first floor.

Now that the water had settled back into place, it was safe for the UST forces to land on the beach and eliminate the remaining Resistance forces. The Great Informer grabbed a sword designed for the Great Informer and anyone else the Great Informer deemed worthy and headed off to the helipad of the aircraft carrier. The dark figure was going to lead fifty Deplorables dressed in a special variation of the traditional black riot gear into battle. The special variation featured the black gear nebulously coated over in a light violet paint with one vertical stripe painted on each side of the chest that went all around the armor in dark purple along with the colar and the tips of the shoulder pads on the chest plate painted the same color, an unobtrusively colored navy blue crotch plate and shin and thigh guards, and a hazily painted "dirty blonde" tactical helmet. These fighters were from the Great Informer's personal division of fighters, known as the Knights of Lefèvre. In order to do that, the Great Informer had to board a helicopter from the TTS Ronald J. Thump to get to the nearest equipped amphibious assault ship, the TTS Thumplandia. Once on board, the Great Informer boarded one of six amphibious assault vehicles with the Knights of Lefèvre and then they were all loaded onto one larger Landing Craft Air Cushion that transported them from the ocean to the shore where they unloaded and headed towards the base.

Meanwhile, inside Station Three, four surviving members of Twin One accompanied by two Resistance fighters from Yucaipa they met while fighting on the ground fought to make their way into the actual military base on the premises. The team's leaders, Sergeant Dana McTavish and Private First Class Kai Baluyut lead the fighters up into the main control tower as the latter's twin sister, Kya, along with Peter, Ione, Aaron, Tom, and Jessica went on a search for a plane in which to evacuate since the Resistance had fled without them. Tom Daniels had in fact received the server containing the virus Rachel had thrown over the ledge and handed it over to McT who ordered him to run the virus through the computers of Station Three. The storming of the main control tower was surprisingly not that difficult since the Deplorables that should've been protecting the base lay dead outside. There was not much of a confrontation between the officers in the main control tower, and they were all disposed of immediately. Specialist Wilson, Specialist Hughes, Sergeant Green, Sergeant Clark, Second Lieutenant Harris, Post Commander Schirmer; they were all eliminated by the remaining Twin One fighters.

Once the room was cleared of hostiles, McT and Kai entered a room that was separated from the rest of the base since the only way to enter it was via a passageway on the left side of the tower. Inside this room was where all the nuclear weapons under the dominion of Station Three were launched from. Once they shot down all of the officers inside, McT and Kai hooked up the server to the main computer with the large screen in front of the room as its monitor. When all of the files located inside the server popped up on the monitor, Kai or McT didn't know which file contained the virus, so just to be safe, they copied and pasted every file on the server to the main computer. It took well over half an hour for all of the files from the server to duplicate on the main computer, but once the process was done, something strange happened. At first, nothing appeared to have happened other than hundreds of thousands of files were copied onto the main computer, but then out of nowhere the infamous "Blue Screen of Death" appeared. McT and Kai would have been forgiven for thinking they just crashed the main computer, but in reality, the revenge of Joshua Alcroft was just getting started. While the screen still remained blue, a separate window appeared which began expressing the "Daughter of Sin" virus in binary code: 01001100 01101111 01100001 01101110 00100000 01001100 01101001 01100101 01101110 01100001 00100000 01001100 01111001 01110010 01100001 00100000 01001100 01101001 01100010 01111001 00100000 01001100 01100001 01100011 01111001 00100000 01001100 01110101 01110000 01100001 00100000 01001100 01101001 01101110 01100001 00100000 01001100 01101111 01101110 01100100 01100101 01111001 00100000 01001100 01110101 01110000 01100101 00100000 01001100 01100001 01101110 01101001.

As the series of zeros and ones began to appear on the large monitor, McT received a call on his walkie talkie from Peter, to which he relayed to Kai, saying "Let's go, Peter said he found a plane."

Since the virus seemed to be infecting the main computer already, Kai saw no need to remain in the room, leading him to disconnect the server from the main computer, and replying, "Alright, let's go."

"We have to go now!" McT screamed at the other fighters once he and Kai had made it back up to the main control tower where the others remained.

Since Station Three was built out of a former airport, the surviving Twin One and Resistance fighters had to find the gate Peter mentioned he had found the plane at. He said he had found a plane at gate C15, making it a bit difficult to find it since the UST had removed the former airport's signs. Luckily, there were still a few spots where the shadow of the gate letter and numbers still grazed the walls since the year or so since they were removed did not compete with the decades they had blocking sunlight from slowly burning the walls. They eventually found gate C15 and they were able to see the plane Peter had found, a C-20 Gulfstream IV, through the large window that grazed the final wall of the former airport. The only way to get onto the plane was to go through an old jet bridge which seemed to have been damaged during the battle since its internal lights kept flickering. At first, the entire team overlooked that detail and ran straight inside, but when they made it half way through and a door separating where one jet bridge ends and another begins did not want to open, the lights went compelty off.

McT and Kai tried to push it open but to no avail, to which McT said, "It's stuck."

"Hey, hey, help!" Kai screamed out, hoping someone on the plane would hear him.

The two continued to try and open the door but they were distracted when they heard the sound of footsteps approaching them. They turned around to see if it was one of the other Twin One or Resistance fighters, but they were all standing still. The noise was coming from someone entering the jet bridge. Out of pure instinct, the surviving Twin One fighters, Jamie and Hannah, and the Resistance fighters, Sean and Justin pointed their guns straight towards the dark corridor they had just come through. As more time passed, the footsteps became much more noticeable and you could also even hear someone breathing, but you could still not see who this person was. The Twin One and Resistance fighters grew even more nervous as time passed on, but they grew incredibly scared once they saw what happened next.

All of a sudden, the footsteps stopped, there was no way to guess there was someone in front of them; that was until a small red light came on and illuminated a dark robed and hooded figure standing right in front of them. The Great Informer had tracked down the team with the "Daughter of Sin" virus and was now ready to strike them down with the sword that illuminated the room. Damocles was the name of the gray sword in the Great Informer's hand; it had a large hilt with a curved hilt on either side, along with a red beam which ran through the middle of the thick blade surrounded by lashing grommets along the edges. The sword was also paired with a special black glove worn on the user's right hand that attached itself to Damocles via a system of electrodes.

With the red light radiating from the beam at the core of Damocles illuminating the threat they all suspected was coming for them, McT screamed at the utterly terrified fighters, "Open fire!"

The surviving Twin One and Resistance fighters began shooting at the Great Informer, but when the bullets seemed to travel around the figure, just like Peter during the battle, Kai realized that they were no match for the Great Informer, he banged as hard as he could on the door, and screamed, "Help us!"

As the Great Informer got closer to the Twin One and Resistance fighters, they all began to taste the fury of Damocles. Specialist Hannah Parkerson was the first fighter to get stabbed in the chest by the Great Informer, followed by Specialist Sean Butler and his longtime friend, Corporal Justin Rogers. With only three Twin One fighters left to eliminate, the Great Informer took all the time needed to enjoy these next few kills since they were people who were close to an integral person of the entire plan. The Great Informer approached one childhood friend of Phillip DeVille, Corporal Jamie Figueroa, and proceeded to stab him in the abdomen.

Around this time, Kai's twin sister, Kya, and Aaron had arrived to the other side of the door separating the jet bridges and saw the carnage going on as Kai panicked, screaming, "It's jammed!"

 **"** Pull!" Kya responded as the two tried to open the door from opposite ends, all the while the Great Informer picked Jamie up while he was still attached to Damocles.

All it took to remove Jamie from Damocles' grip was to shake the sword a few times so that the teeth-like lashing grommets could cut through the lower part of his body and causing it to fall to the ground. The Great Informer also took pleasure in killing McT as he too was once a friend of Phil's. Both McT and Jamie were present at the DeVille's disastrous eleventh birthday party which culminated in one of the twin's trademark fights. Little did both of the victims, like most of the other guests, know that the Great Informer was both the backstage manager setting the stage and an audience member with front-row seats to the DeVille family drama. The Great Informer had engineered many of the most important events in the twin's lives, however the Great Informer was still not a destiny-changing god since the outcome of it all was still of Phillip's own deepest desires.

Once the Great Informer had decapitated Sergeant Dana McTavish with a single swing, Kai then tried to squeeze through a gap between the door, and said to Kya and Aaron, "Here, here, pull me!"

The two pulled Kai from his right arm with the server in hand and had gotten him through the doorway about half of the way when all of a sudden the Great Informer turned his attention to escaping fighter. Similar to with McT, the Great Informer swung Damocles in the air and managed to cut off Kai's left arm so easily it looked like a knife going through warm butter. The pain of losing an arm to a sword resulted in Kai screaming out in pain from the top of his lungs; however he also threw himself out from in between the doorway and onto the floor on the other side. With blood gushing out of what remained of Kai's arm while the Great Informer cut down the door separating them, Kya picked up her twin from the floor and dragged him onto the plane. Private First Class Aaron Thompson Wilcox stayed in between the Baluyut twins and the dark figure, but when the Great informer cut down the door and made it to the other side, there was no hesitation on the Great Informer's part to strike him down where he stood.

Out of fear of getting cut down, Kya ran as fast as she could, threw Kai's body onto the plane, shut the door behind her, and screamed at Peter and Tom in the cockpit as she tied Kai's shirt around his cut arm, "Takeoff!"

Peter and his new co-pilot in training immediately began to pull the plane away from the jet bridge and began to get on the runway in preparation for takeoff. At the same time, the Great Informer, now accompanied by four Knights of Lefèvre, had reached the end of the jet bridge and was now staring directly outside at the runway. As the Great Informer decreased the grip strength on Damocles, the red beam in the center shut down, no longer illuminating the dark figure. They all watched the stolen C-20 Gulfstream IV make its way down the runway and begin to take off, the Knights of Lefèvre were all visibly annoyed that their targets had escaped them. The Great Informer, however, was feeling something else. Even though the Great Informer had engineered the regime that had their secrets stolen by a band of revolutionaries, the Great Informer was glad they had gotten away. Hidden underneath the grey breathing apparatus, the Great Informer put out a huge smile since the Resistance had done as expected and unknowingly helped progress the Great Informer's master plan.

A few minutes later, on the C-20 Gulfstream IV, Peter and company were glad they had made it out of Station Three alive, even if Kai had lost his left arm during the escape, but now they needed a place to go. Tom managed to get into contact with the Resistance's Miami branch and told them that they were from the LA branch, that they in fact had retrieved the server with the "Daughter of Sin" virus, and needed information on where to deliver it. The Miami branch told them to hold since they were going to consult the LA branch on what they wanted their personnel to do. A while passed, but then Joscelin Garcia, a young woman with fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, responded to Tom's request by telling him that he needed to deliver the server to a secure location in the city of Pittsfield in Massachusetts. Tom asked for some coffee and fuel to be delivered to the secure location so that they may refuel and get back home, then thanked Joscelin for the update, and informed Peter of their mission to New England.

The flight to Pittsfield took over two hours but for the most part the trip went smoothly. Peter was able to land the plane in an open swath of land southeast of the city and walked the rest of the distance from there. When they made it to the secure location, Peter handed the server to the person living at the home and immediately brought the woman sent to the secure location from the Resistance's Hartford branch, Corporal Ginger Foutley, a young woman with fair skin and curly red hair, over to the location that the plane was so that they could refuel and get back to LA.

Two more hours passed, and another plane, except this time it was a much smaller Cessna 421, landed in the same field that Peter did. Zack Wehrenberg got off of the plane after spending most of the day in the air, flying across the country to his hometown. Unlike Peter who needed to use a GPS to find out where he was going, Zack immediately remembered the route to his destination. After a while of walking through the empty field and making his way through the residential area at night, he made it to his destination. Before he could enter the New England style house where he spent most of his childhood, he got a call from the Council of the Resistance's LA branch informing him that their sensors had detected something large had crashed within the branch's jurisdiction and that they were going to send a team to investigate it.

Once he heard the proposal from Chairman Petersen, Zack replied, "Great, then send Commander Pickles and his team to go investigate the UFO crash."

His choice of words overly excited a member of Commander Pickles' team, resulting in Zack responding, "What, no, Dil, not that kind of UFO. I'm talking about literal flying object that happens to be 'unidentified.' If it's not one of our planes, it's probably a UST plane that malfunctioned."

After hanging up the call, Zack pulled out his old key from his pocket to open the front door, and once he entered the home, he said, "Aunty Celeste, it's me, Zack."

Zack then ventured into the living room where he spotted his aunt, Celeste Wehrenberg, a fifty-five year old woman with fair skin and long, thick, curly brown hair, sitting on the couch. Celeste raised Zack for most of his life since his parents and paternal grandparents died in a house fire and she was the only family member willing to take him in. As Zack got older and Celeste became blind, it became much more difficult for her to raise him; however, she never gave up caring for him. It was the everyday acts of heroism Celeste committed that inspired Zack to join the Resistance and help others. It also didn't hurt that a common target of the UST's scapegoating tactics were people with disabilities, such as the disabled reporter Thump mocked on the campaign trail.

After Celeste lifted herself up from the couch to give her nephew a hug, Zack pointed to the server in her hands, and asked, "What is it they've sent us?"

Even though she could not see, she faced Zack as she rubbed her hands around the server containing classified secrets of the UST and the "Daughter of Sin" virus itself, and simply replied, "Hope."

Celeste was right; hope had been delivered that night. After over a year of Thump and his cronies deconstructing the institutions that once held this great land together, there was hope that things could get better. People had to give their lives in order to reach the point they had gotten to on that day, but their passing would not be in vain. Their sacrifices would be honored as the Resistance now had what it needed to strike a larger blow at the UST and to restore order and sanity to the country.


End file.
